


with silver bullets on my tongue

by blackkat



Series: got a single silver bullet (shot right through my heart) [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Western, Anti-Heroes, Drama, F/F, Friendship, Humor, M/M, Revenge, Were-Creatures
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-22 06:45:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17657930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: The expanse of desert that rings the territory hides far more dangers than anyone will say. Obito and Sasori, seeking revenge on the man who destroyed their worlds, run headlong into a stagecoach robber with a hidden power, a sheriff with secrets even he isn't aware of, and a plot that could leave the world broken before the next full moon sets.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For KakaObi Week, Day 6: Soulmates | Reverse Roles. 
> 
> This was more or less inspired by the Golgotha series by R. S. Belcher, specifically the first book, The Six-Gun Tarot. The fic is a WIP that's mostly complete, but also the first part of a series, and I'll warn you now that the whole story ends on something of a cliffhanger. As it stands, I'll be posting one chapter a day of this first part, but there's no current ETA on the next installment, sorry.

The dusty shape of the town is the only break in the desert as it rolls towards the mountains, and Obito has been watching it grow larger on the horizon all day. In the distance, the mountains rise, long hills steadily climbing into soaring peaks capped with snow under the evening sun, but they're far enough away that it will take at least another few hours to reach them, and the darkness will fall quickly once the sun sets. Obito normally doesn’t have a lot of opinions about camping out in the desert, but this close to the hills, he’s wary of being so exposed.

“What are the odds there's a marshal in town?” he asks.

Sasori, hunkered down on his heavy-boned buckskin with his hat tipped back, casts a glance ahead of them, then snorts. “Do you want the odds respective of this being the northernmost part of the territory?” he asks dryly. “Or the odds respective of our luck?”

“Both,” Obito mutters, but he already knows the chances. Konoha is large enough that it might have a sheriff, but any sort of federal marshal is unlikely. Any marshal coming here will have to ride from Taki, too. They’ve got some breathing room, even if things go south.

Still, their luck’s been downright horrid recently, and Obito isn't about to start placing bets on anything.

“The livery at least shouldn’t have wanted posters,” he says.

The faint tip of Sasori’s head is reluctant agreement. “It’s off the main street,” he offers. “Set back near the stagecoach office. As long as you don’t raise a fuss, we should be able to pass the night.”

Obito rolls his eye, but he doesn’t object, since he was the one who got them run out of Kusa before they’d even gotten their boots off. “If we leave before sunrise, we should get to the hills before noon.”

The line of Sasori’s mouth thins. “I can't wait,” he says harshly, then tips his wide-brimmed hat down over his eyes and determinedly presses Hiruko into a trot.

Well, that’s one way to end a conversation, Obito supposes. His mare shifts, dancing in place like she wants to bold after the buckskin, but Obito reins her in, lets Sasori put distance between them. “Easy, Kamui,” he murmurs, and the mare pins her ears, baring her teeth, but subsides with only a small kick of her back feet. Since that’s practically saintly for her, Obito ignores it, even lets her quicken her walk without pulling her back. He waits until the edges of the town come clear to let her go, and then she bolts forward to catch up to Hiruko, long legs eating up the ground.

Sasori only glances back briefly, acknowledges Obito with a faint huff, and turns his horse, heading not for the main street but a smaller side street. The road is wider, rutted by the coach wheels, and Obito can feel a prickle across his skin, sliding across his bones.

With a dissatisfied sound, Sasori lifts his head, glancing at the sky. “Sundown,” he says, and as if in answer a distant, lonely howl breaks across the desert.

There are no cries to answer it, and Obito has never heard a coyote sound like that. Frowning, he looks over at Sasori, then tips his hat down a little further and says quietly, “We should find somewhere with a door.”

The looming line of the hills and the mountain peaks beyond is backlit, far beyond and high above Konoha. Obito watches darkness crawl across the peaks, spill down the slopes to flood the desert, and it feels—heady. Night normally does, but this is something different. Old, Obito thinks, though he can't say why. The air feels like it’s an old thing that’s coming, an ancient force that’s pouring from the hills, and he wants to kick Kamui into a gallop, turn her out to the open plain and let her run the way he rarely does, head for the place where the sun just set and lose himself in that ageless dark.

By the indrawn breath, a rasp in the twilight, Sasori feels it too. He flicks a glance at Obito, then back at the desert, and says, “Perhaps we should have camped.”

Here, with the faint candlelight glow of the town, full of fire and walls and thresholds, the call of the night is strong. Obito can't even imagine what it would be like in the middle of the plain, with no touch of humanity in sight.

“Maybe we should have,” he agrees, though he isn't sure he means it.

And then, sudden and loud, there's a rap. Obito twitches, only just manages not to grab his revolver as he spins Kamui around, and can see Sasori do the same. They look up the road, back between the worn wood of the houses, and—

The rap comes again, and this time there's a laugh to go with it. “Over here,” a voice calls. “You boys new in town?”

Obito looks over, then up. There's a window a little above eye-level in a wall of weathered brick, and a woman in the frame of it, right behind the bars. She smiles when she sees Obito looking, raises a hand to tip the hat she isn't wearing, and says, “Evening, gentlemen. Care to help a lady out?”

Obito eyes the bars, then her. She’s dressed for hard work and hard riding, the sleeves of her shirt rolled up and her leather vest worn to the shape of her body. Brown hair swings around her face as she leans forward, right up against the bars, and Obito can see a flash of leather cord around her wrists. Whoever left her in the cell, they definitely weren’t taking any chances if they tied her hands, too.

“Evening,” Obito returns, a little bemused.

The woman laughs a little, propping her elbows on the sill. “Any chance you’d be willing to assist a lady in distress?” she asks sweetly.

The tone doesn’t match the look in her eyes, or the fact that she’s in what seems to be the town’s jail. Obito raises a brow, looking her over. “If you're a lady, should you really be asking strangers for help?” he asks dryly. “Especially given where you are right now?”

“I never said _I_ was the lady,” she retorts, and hooks a thumb at the room behind her. “Besides, seeing as I've been staring at your pretty mugs all day on the sheriff’s wall, I figured my chances were decent.”

Sasori stiffens faintly, but Obito doesn’t let himself. Meets her eyes instead, steady and cool, and says, “Should we expect the sheriff sneaking around the side of the building, then?”

“He’s gone for the night.” The woman tips one shoulder in a careless shrug, but her smile is faintly wicked. “It would be the perfect opportunity for some handsome, enterprising young men to wander in and unlock the cell, don’t you think?”

Obito snorts, wheels Kamui back around towards the livery. “I’m sure you’ll find some men like that any minute now,” he promises dryly, and—

“Wait!” The woman grabs the bars, practically pressing herself against them, and gives Obito a smile that’s full of intent. “Come on, I’ll owe you one. A favor. _Anything_ you want. All you have to do is let me out.”

Sasori pulls a face, but Obito pauses. He glances back at the woman, eying her sun-browned skin and the worn clothes, and then says, “Anything?”

“Anything at all.” She taps her lips, smiling, and crooks a finger at him. “Come on, I'm sure you can think of—”

“The old gold mine in the hills,” Obito interrupts. “Do you know how to get there?”

The woman pauses, and an expression that’s close to offense flickers over her face. Then it slides into humor, and she laughs, rocking back from the bars again. “Gold?” she says. “Well, I guess everyone likes gold. But the owner of that mine up there likes to shoot first, and they say the shafts are full of all the bodies of the people who’ve come looking to rob him. I'm not much of one for tall tales, but that story I’d believe.”

Obito trades glances with Sasori, who’s frown has turned into a speculative look. He inclines his head, just faintly, and Obito smirks.

“We don’t want Rasa's gold,” he says. “Just the way into his mine.”

For a moment, the woman watches them like she’s trying to decide if they're telling the truth. Then, with a snort, she raises her bound hands. “I actually believe you,” she says, clearly amused. “Neither of you looks like you’d know what to do with gold if you had it.”

Sasori frowns like he’s trying to decide whether or not to be offended, then clearly chooses to ignore the implications. “And what, precisely, would we be releasing you from?” he asks, eyes narrowing faintly.

She pouts, largely theatrical, with amusement just beneath the seriousness. “Me? Nothing that bad. The sheriff’s just trying to make a point by keeping me in here.”

“He’s not doing all that well if you’re sitting alone in a cell while he’s out of town,” Obito says, and gives Sasori another look. If they _do_ break her out, they're going to have to leave town immediately, and brave the desert in the dark. There's no saying the sheriff will stay gone tomorrow, and Obito isn't entirely willing to blast his way past someone with a badge just to get a dubiously reliable guide.

Rather than give him a definitive answer, Sasori tips one shoulder, leaving the decision up to Obito, and Obito grimaces at him. It makes Sasori smirk, but he’s not forthcoming on any helpful advice, and Obito hesitates, turning the matter over. They’d planned to hire a guide from one of the local tribes, if possible, or just search for Rasa's homestead on their own but—a definite guide, with reasons not to sell them out and a debt to pay, is a lot better than hoping to find someone out in the desert.

There's one way to be certain. Or _more_ certain, at the very least. Obito glances around them, and there's still a trace of fading daylight, just enough to see by. He tugs one of his gloves off, then reaches into the pocket of his coat and pulls out the first thing to touch his fingertips.

Blue and gold background, red and silver cup. A figure holding it out, offered up like a sacrifice. The Page of Cups, Obito knows, and turns the tarot card over in his fingers for a long moment before he slides it away and pulls his glove back on.

Possibilities, he thinks, and wants to smile, bare and bitter. Nothing to say they're _good_ possibilities, but at this point he’ll take what he can get.

“All right,” he says. “A way out in exchange for leading us to Rasa's claim. Deal?”

“Deal,” the woman says, and offers a hand through the bars. Obito takes it, and he can feel the bone-sharp resonance of the pact as it settles over them.

The woman feels it, too. Her eyes widen, then narrow, and she looks from Obito to Sasori and back again. Just when Obito is preparing for her to yell for help, though, she smiles. “I'm Rin Nohara,” she says. “Nice doing business with you boys. Now get me out.”

That’s easier said than done. Obito pauses, thinking it through, and breathes out. “You still have your marshal’s badge?” he asks Sasori.

One red brow rises, but Sasori fishes the metal star from one of his pockets. “If they see me with this,” he starts.

Obito waves him off, knowing precisely how widespread Sasori’s reputation as a traitor to the marshals has gotten. “Not for you, for me,” he retorts, and Sasori snorts and flips the badge across the space between their horses. Obito catches it, then clips it to the breast of his shirt, brushes his long duster back so it’s visible, and tilts his hat down to shade his eyes. Dressed all in black and riding a black horse, he probably doesn’t make for the most unremarkable figure, but people tend to see the badge and keep moving.

“You have a horse?” he asks Rin.

Rin grimaces. “Tied up in front of the saloon still. The owner’s been watching him. White gelding missing the tip of his left ear, red saddle-blanket, shotgun behind the saddle.”

Sasori nods, turning Hiruko and urging him on. Obito watches them disappear, then waits several seconds to be sure no one is immediately going to recognize Sasori, and when there are no shouts or gunshots he turns Kamui, trotting her around the building and then reining her in right in front of the jailhouse and sliding off her back. It’s the sheriff’s office as well, by the looks of things, and Obito gives the shotgun propped by the door a wary look. It’s a big gun, well cared for, and very obviously frequently used. There's no one in the building besides Rin, though, and no sign that the sheriff is about to burst in looking for something he’s forgotten.

“The sheriff in these parts spend a lot of time out of town?” he asks dryly, checking the desk for keys. There aren’t any, but there is a wanted poster lying on the wood, and Obito tugs it around to face him with one finger. There are a few erotic serials from a paper Obito _knows_ isn't worth the paper it’s printed on, too. Some perverted old man as sheriff, then? That would be a stroke of good luck.

“I think he’s out chasing rumors right now,” Rin says, and she’s leaning on the bars and watching him with sharp eyes. “Missing kids, you know.”

Obito didn’t know, but then, he and Sasori have been riding flat-out for the last three weeks, without taking the time to stop and hear the news. “So this point the sheriff’s proving, having you in here,” he says, and holds up the poster so Rin can see it. The sketch is a good likeness. “Got anything to do with how robbing stagecoaches is a crime?”

Rin's grin is all pretty mischief. “Maybe, but who can tell?”

Obito snorts, but approaches the door of the cell, eying the heavy lock. It’s new, the metal still bright, and there's an etching on the back that Obito hasn’t seen before. “The sheriff took his keys with him?” he asks.

“Made a show of it, too,” Rin confirms, and that pout is back. She’s not overly concerned about being in the sheriff’s custody, which means she’s probably not headed for a hanging. Obito doesn’t blame her for wanting out, though, especially if she’s been robbing stages. The stage companies don’t look kindly on that.

Without the keys, there's only a handful of options, and only one that’s quick enough. Obito grimaces, but tugs off his glove with his teeth again, then tucks it into a pocket. “You're really willing to brave the desert at night?” he asks.

Rin's smile takes on a slant that says she knows precisely what he’s implying with that question. “I've got an appointment I need to keep,” she answers. “And besides, there are worse things than that stretch of desert.”

Not a lot of them, if one believes the legends, and Obito's never fond a reason not to. Especially recently.

Reaching into his pocket, Obito pulls out the first card he feels, glancing at it in the light of the jail. It’s a bound and blindfolded woman, with eight golden swords set against a blue background—the Eight of Swords, which is what Obito would hoping it would be. Reaching out, he taps the card against the lock and then carefully, deliberately flips it upside down.

Exalted, the Eight of Swords is the card of trapped souls, of blindness and limits. Obito just has to turn it, set it in the diminished position, and he reverses the meaning. Then the card’s power means trapped souls freed, and locks undone.

There's a long, crackling pause, tense and sharp as an unseen force builds like a river heading towards flood. Obito sets his jaw, eye narrowing, keeps the power wrapped around him sliding into the card as best he can, and—

With a sharp click, the lock pops open, drops away, and the door swings out. Rin makes a sound of victory, ducking into the main room, and Obito catches her elbow as he slides the card away with his other hand. “Any personal effects?” he asks.

“Only my gun, and the sheriff took that with him. And my hat, which he didn’t.” Rin glances at his bare, scarred hand, interest in her eyes, and then up at his face. “Useful cards you have there.”

Using them makes Obito's skin itch, memories more than the force of them. “They serve well enough,” he says, harsh in his throat, and pulls his glove back on.

Rin hums, and her gaze slides from Obito to the wall that’s hung with wanted posters. Obito doesn’t need to look over to see his own face among them, or Sasori’s face two rows up. Hopefully, there aren’t too many people in Konoha who will remember, and the falling darkness will help hide Obito's more recognizable features.

“I suppose you're taking me to hang, Marshal?” Rin asks, and it’s almost laughing as she casts Obito a sly smile. “Should I be angry or terrified?”

Despite himself, Obito can't help but smile back. “How would you react to the sheriff?”

“Spitting mad,” Rin says cheerfully, and then screams. It’s a sound of pure rage, and Obito is a little impressed as she throws herself forward, jerks against his hold. Not hard enough to get away, though, especially with her hands still bound, and he drags her towards the door, grabbing her weather-beaten hat off the hook by the door and dropping it on her head as they go.

The pair of people coming down the sidewalk scatter as Obito pulls Rin out into the street, snarling and thrashing, and Obito turns, hiding his scars as he pulls her on. “Stop your scheming,” he snaps. “You're wanted for robbery and I’ll see you hang for it.”

Rin just misses kicking out his kneecap. “You son of a bitch, you're a yellow-bellied _sidewinder_ —”

“Keep that up and I’ll drag you back to the city behind my horse,” Obito says, and Rin snaps her head back like she’s aiming to break his nose. Her hat falls off again, but Obito can't stop to pick it up as other hands grab Rin's opposite arm. She hisses, kicks out, and the man yelps and almost goes down. Then Sasori is there, stooping to grab Rin's feet, and together they wrestle her onto her horse as she thrashes.

“Blazes,” Obito mutters, because if that’s Rin _pretending_ to struggle he doesn’t want to see what she’s like when she puts some effort into it. Checking that Sasori has her reins, he scoops her hat up, dumps it on her head again, and then tells the stranger, “Thanks.”

The man snorts, straightening a little warily as he puts weight on his leg. “You still kick like a mule,” he tells Rin.

She gives him a poisonous look. “If anyone deserves it, it’s you,” she retorts. “Still a boot-licker chasing the sheriff’s heels, Tenzō?”

The man’s mouth thins. “At least I'm not robbing innocent people.” Then, very deliberately, he looks away from Rin, turns a faintly strained smile on Obito instead. His gaze flickers to the marshal’s star before rising, and this time, his smile is a good bit warmer. “Marshal. Kakashi wasn’t expecting you for another week.”

“I finished up some business early,” Obito lies, but—that’s a bad sign. They're expecting a real marshal soon, and with Sasori in the area, that sort of thing promises to get ugly. The marshals as a whole don’t tend to appreciate the reminder of all the colleagues Sasori killed when he abandoned the service.

“Kakashi will be sorry he missed you,” the man says, but holds out a hand. “I'm Tenzō. I run the general store.”

Obito takes his hand, assessing the grip—firm, but not a challenge. Tenzō looks that way all over, polite and unassuming, but his words to Rin were sharp, and Obito isn't entirely willing to write him off.

“Where’s the sheriff gotten himself to?” he asks. “Will he turn up if we delay a few hours?”

Tenzō hesitates, glancing up at the sky. There's a nearly-full moon on the horizon, heavy and bloated as it hangs over the hills, and Tenzō stares in its direction for a long moment before he clears his throat and shakes his head. “Probably not. He said he’d be gone at least three days, and he only left yesterday.”

No mention of looking for missing children, and that seems like the kind of thing a helpful townsperson would tell a marshal. Obito isn't sure whether that means Rin was lying, or if she was just mistaken, but he’s not willing to glance over at her and hint at any sort of conspiracy. “Well, when he gets back tell him thanks for the capture. She’s a dangerous one.”

Tenzō slants a bitter look at Rin. “Kakashi’s well aware of that,” he says, pointed, and Rin makes a rude sound, lifting her chin and looking away.

“Kakashi’s too busy drowning in guilt to do a damn thing that’s actually useful,” she says.

Tenzō’s smile is ghoulish and entirely unamused. “He did more than enough to hunt you down,” he retorts. “And he’ll get the rest of your gang, too.”

Rin snorts, like this is completely improbable, but doesn’t answer.

With one last dark look her direction, Tenzō glances back at Obito. “Are you riding out tonight?” he asks, faintly worried. “It’s getting late, Marshal, and it’s a long way back to civilization.”

“Then we’d do better starting now, and getting as far as possible before we camp,” Obito says, and takes Rin's reins from Sasori. Kamui pins her ears and snaps her teeth at the white gelding as Obito swings into the saddle, but she doesn’t try to kick, so Obito doesn’t bother to reprimand her. He just tips his hat at Tenzō, then turns Kamui up the street and picks up a trot, Sasori falling in next to him and the white gelding dragging a few steps behind. There are a few people on the street still, but all of them seem to be hurrying into the lighted buildings, and only a handful even bother to glance over as the three of them pass.

“Downright courteous,” Sasori mutters, frowning, and scans the street.

“It’s getting dark,” is Rin's answer, quiet enough that Obito can barely catch the words. “Not much cause to be out after dark in Konoha unless you've got the devil’s work in mind.”

Obito snorts, because they definitely don’t have that, but it’s probably close enough to count in most people’s eyes. “The dark won't bother us,” he says, which is a slight exaggeration, but it won't bother them the way it would most people. “Good to ride for a ways?”

Rin's smile is full of teeth. “There's an old farmstead about three hours north,” she answers. “Abandoned for years. I've used it to sleep before, and there's water for the horses.”

That’s good enough for Obito. As they pass beyond the light of the town and into the velvet-thick darkness, he reins Kamui in, then pulls a knife from the top of his boot and leans over to Rin. The leather around her wrists parts easily under the blade, and he passes her reins back.

With a sound of relief, Rin shakes out her fingers, rubbing at the red marks the leather left, and then gathers the gelding with deft familiarity. “Thanks,” she says, and there’s a light tone to it but it still sounds sincere. “Kakashi’s been sitting on me over two weeks now. I was starting to miss having two hands.”

“It’s surprising he didn’t take you out and hang you himself,” Sasori says, tipping his hat back. He glances behind them as they start moving again, but there's little sign of movement in the town, and his expression is satisfied when he turns back around and holds out a hand to Obito. Obito passes the marshal’s star back, and Sasori gives it a glance, quick and grim, before he drops it back into his saddlebag.

“The judge isn't due back in Konoha for another month,” Rin says, sounding unbothered. “Kakashi’s not about to take the law into his own hands like that. His own fault for picking me up right after Judge Sarutobi moved on to the next town.”

Obito snorts quietly. “Tight with the rules, then? Useful.”

The slant of Rin's smile is wry. “Don’t underestimate Kakashi. He’s got one thing to cling to and he doesn’t let go of it.”

She sounds like she knows the sheriff in more ways than just sitting in his jail would allow, but Obito doesn’t ask. If she’s an outlaw like they are, she’s likely not about to share. “Funny you recognized us right off,” he says, and Sasori flicks a look at him, eyes narrowing in consideration before he glances at Rin as well.

“I've been sitting in that cell for weeks now,” Rin tells him, and in the moonlight Obito can't be sure, but he thinks he sees her roll her eyes. “Not much to look at besides those wanted posters and Kakashi’s face. And as nice as that is, I can only stomach it for so long before I'm entirely overcome by the urge to knock his teeth out.”

A laugh jars out of Obito's throat, surprising and scalpel-sharp. “Hard when he’s already got you in a cell,” he points out.

“I wasn’t going to be in there forever,” Rin says airily. “If you and your friend hadn’t come along, my gang would’ve happened by eventually.”

Obito gets the feeling this isn't the first time she’s ended up in Konoha's jail. “Glad we could save them the time,” he says. “Obito Uchiha, but you already knew that.”

Sasori huffs softly, but he inclines his head. “Sasori no Akasuna,” he offers.

“The traitorous marshal and the mass murderer,” Rin says, and there's a thread of unholy amusement in her voice. “My knights in shining armor.”

With a grimace, Obito tightens his grip on Kamui’s reins, then gives the mare her head. “You're in good company, stagecoach robber,” he retorts, and kicks Kamui into a lope. The terrain is too rough to go far at any sort of faster gait for long, but the moonlight falls heavy on the road, rising quickly, and there's a burning point in Obito's chest that feels like the kindling spark of a prairie fire, ready to scorch the world and burn everything to ashes.


	2. Chapter 2

The touch of Sasori’s hand in the dark is a familiar thing, cool and deft and light. Obito doesn’t turn, but he shifts over on the porch, making room, and Sasori settles beside him on the sagging stair. The moonlight is fading towards morning, and there's a sharp bite to the air, but the horses are dozing by the edge of the half-built fence and Rin is asleep inside with her hat over her face.

“Did you notice?” Sasori murmurs, and tips his head just faintly at the deep trenches dug around the homestead, three concentric rings with narrow footbridges across them. Dry, this time of year, and Obito can't imagine they ever have much water in them.

“Yeah,” he says, equally quiet, because it’s pretty clear the rings aren’t for water. Not that it helped whoever lived here; there are scratches in the door, across the floor inside. Big and deep, larger than Obito's spread hand, and very obviously deadly to whoever lived here. There's still blood splashed across the walls that time hasn’t managed to wear away.

Sasori grunts, eyes on the desert still. There's an old, battered teapot in his lap, and he runs his finger over the handle, nudges the lid. Obito glances over, raising an eyebrow, and when Sasori catches it he makes a face, but lifts the lid just slightly.

A golden-brown glow spills out into the cool air, and the handful of sand at the bottom of the teapot swirls as if it’s caught in a dust devil. It crashes against one wall of the pot, retreats, rises again, and Obito looks from the pot out in the direction the sand wants to go. Up into the hills, directly in front of them, towards the spot where the sun set.

Obito breathes out, heavy and almost resigned. “We were right,” he says.

Sasori inclines his head. “I don’t like that the sheriff is elsewhere,” he says. “Or that there are missing children.”

Not for sentimentality reasons, Obito knows; Sasori isn't like that. But it means things are happening, and while neither of them expected this to be seamless or simple, the clear sign that there's something at work is confirmation neither of them wanted.

Carefully, Sasori replaces the lid of the teapot, smothering the glow, and then sets it aside. He checks the stars, half-choked as they are by the moonlight, and then says, “Rasa is likely to be unforthcoming, and entirely unhelpful.”

It’s not as if Obito expected anything different. He snorts, propping his boot on the stair, and asks, “Will he recognize you?”

“Doubtful.” Sasori sounds faintly derisive. “Rasa has never cared much for those around him unless they can immediately benefit him.”

Not exactly surprising to hear, given what he’s been doing. Obito rubs a hand over his patch, trying to will away the beginnings of a migraine, and focuses on the dark outline of the distant hills. Rasa's hidden himself away among the slopes, guarding his gold mine viciously, but they're not looking for the wealth. They want something deeper in the earth, something Rasa likely doesn’t even know is there.

“The marshal who’s coming might be able to get a description of us from Tenzō,” he says, and the breath that escapes him on a sigh is tired. They’ve been running for a long time already.

“They will.” There's no doubt in Sasori’s tone, and Obito can see the way his fingers curl, almost fisting. “We have a week, and we’d best make the most of it.”

Obito nods, then pushes to his feet. There's a restless, unsettled itch in his chest, and even with the defensive rings, even with the looming moon, he doesn’t want to stay still. “I'm going to check the barn again,” he says, and Sasori looks at him for a long, long moment before he inclines his head.

“Don’t wander,” he warns. “The rings are there for a reason.”

Obito doesn’t need to be told that, and he rolls his eye, doesn’t turn to watch Sasori go back inside the house as he heads down the steps and across the property. The land here is dusty-dry, more sand than patchy grass, the red earth cast to black by the moonlight. Dotted across the homestead, the abandoned buildings are squat, unsettling shapes, all jagged shadows and disrepair. Obito doesn’t _like_ this place, but it’s one of the nicer he and Sasori have rested at in the past months. Neither of them particularly needs sleep, but the horses do. And Rin does, Obito supposes, since she’s with them for however long it takes to find Rasa's claim. That’s going to take some adjustments.

Kamui is still awake enough to lift her head when she hears his steps, and she turns her head to watch him approach, ears pricked without alarm. Obito rummages in his pocket for a moment, coming up with a small bag of the cinnamon hard candy that she loves. When he shakes one out, she takes it eagerly, and Obito strokes her sleek neck for a moment before he leaves her to enjoy it, heading out in a wide arc that cuts around the house. There's an old well that’s mostly dry, topped by a half-collapsed wellhouse filled with unpleasantly large spiders, and beyond it what must have once been a kitchen garden, bare lines of turned earth slowly being swallowed by the desert. One more outbuilding has entirely given way, a heap of bone-dry boards, and Obito skirts it carefully, hearing a faint rustle from under the wood.

The barn sits right up against one of the trenched rings, bare inches from the first line. One of the doors is half-hanging off its hinges, decorated with more deep claw marks. Obito can't resist the urge to touch them as he passes, fitting his fingers over the marks. Even with his hand spread all the way, he can barely span the first two scratches, and he stares at the gouges for a long moment, at the comparison, at the way the scratches all but cut entirely through the wood. It makes him remember the splatter of blood across the walls of the house, the way everything is still arrayed so perfectly, like the owner was taken unawares. Surprised, and killed, and a handful of squatters have passed through since, but they’ve been careful to disturb very little of the scene.

The desert is dangerous. Obito's learned that the hard way, these last few years. And this stretch is more dangerous than most.

He and Sasori checked the barn earlier, looked through it for any sign of life, but Obito still pushes inside, glancing around. There's still hay piled in a stall, tools set against the wall and clear in the moonlight that falls through the wide gaps in the roof. Signs of animals, too—not livestock, but something smaller. Foxes and rabbits, Obito thinks. Maybe a few coyotes, even, emboldened by the lack of people and the promise of prey.

It makes him think of another homestead, far away and long ago. Makes him think of the blood on the walls there, and the bodies. A deck of trionfi cards, fallen and scattered across the kitchen floor, and the way his mother’s hand reached out, her unfamiliar face a rictus of terror.

Obito's breath shakes out of him, ragged with the edges of old rage, raw with the fury that still burns through him. He _hates_ , and it’s the only thing in him, the only force driving him. Fire, furious and cold and _blistering_ , and he breathes through it carefully, slowly, stuffs it back down where he keeps it simmering, festering. Time enough for that later, once they're done. Once they’ve caught up with the man Obito means to kill, and destroyed him as thoroughly and utterly as they're capable of.

Between himself and Sasori, Obito has faith that they can finally make it permanent.

He forces his fingers to uncurl, makes himself step back. Breathes, and keeps walking, because the barn’s rear door is standing ajar, letting more moonlight in. It’s an invitation, and Obito takes it, pushing out into the night air and taking a step over the first trench. The door stands across it regardless; if it was intended as a barrier, the line is already broken.

The second line is broken, too, Obito can see, now that he’s looking. There's a pole fallen across the ring, the edge of what was likely once a rough fence. Strange, though, that it fell so perfectly, stayed so whole when it hit. It breaks the second and first rings, and beyond, the third and widest looms.

Lightly, Obito leaps across the trenches, approaching the pole. It’s half-buried, has clearly been here for a while—not a side effect of the fence collapsing from wear, then. When he crouches down, nudges it with a knuckle, it doesn’t move, and it takes a good bit of effort to shift it from its place.

The sight of claw marks carved into the surface isn't nearly the surprise it likely should be, at this point.

With a grimace, Obito pulls the post up, topples it back across to hit the dirt beyond the first ring, then turns back. The outermost ring looks largely clear, at least on this side of the barn, and Obito walks right up to it, pauses with the toes of his boots almost touching the ditch as he stares out into the desert. He can see a rabbit bolting out of the scrub, the sweep of a bat high up, and beyond them the slopes of the hills stark in the silver light.

And, on the curve of one, high up and distant, a spark of unearthly blue.

Obito pauses, frowning, but the light doesn’t move. It grows, burning, brighter than any candle flame and entirely the wrong color, with an intensity that almost hurts Obito's eye despite the distance. Stationary, eerie, and it must be large to see it from here, like a bonfire. Or maybe the start of a prairie fire. But that wouldn’t burn blue, and Obito can't think of anything that would.

Something curls through Obito's chest, like panic, or maybe fear. He stares, can't tear his gaze away, and the light grows stronger, brighter, rises higher. _Lifts_ , and Obito suddenly realizes that it’s rising into the sky like a falling star in reverse, slow and stately—

In the desert, in the darkness, far, _far_ closer than the light, a shape comes clear.

The movement draws Obito's eye, pulls his attention away from the blue light and back down to the land, every nerve suddenly screaming _threat_. The shape is _big_ , indistinct but on all fours, and it looks like a twisted, skeletal bear-shape with long fur and misshapen, spidery limbs. Half a second for his brain to catch up with what he’s seeing and Obito recoils, grabbing for his gun even though at this distance he has no chance of hitting anything. Terror bolts through him, half surprise and half something deeper, instinctive, the animal part of his brain shrieking a warning. He opens his mouth to shout for Sasori, for Rin, for anyone and anything that can save him—

And then, as suddenly as it appeared, the blue light vanishes.

With a surge of motion, the beast in the darkness rises, no longer on all fours but on two legs. It _looms_ , much taller than a man and the wrong shape entirely, impossibly wide shoulders and a thick body and legs that don’t bend the way they should, and it raises its wedge-shaped head to the sky. Takes a step, lurching in a fashion that hits Obito as _wrong_ in every possible way, and opens its mouth.

A hoarse, guttural _howl_ breaks across the desert, and the creature lurches again. Jerks, almost falling except it hits on all fours and then comes upright again, momentum instead of a misstep. It leaps, surging forward to cover a vast tract of land, and then it’s gone, vanished into the darkness and the distance.

Obito's heart is hummingbird quick in his chest, almost painful. He stumbles back a step, then sprints for the barn, grabbing the door and hauling it closed and off the trench. It slams with an unnervingly loud bang, and Obito throws the rusty bolt, then hurries for the front.

Sasori is already halfway across the property, heading for him with his shotgun in his hands, and Rin is a bare meter behind him, still stripped down to her jeans and undershirt but with her rifle at the ready.

“What was that?” Sasori demands sharply.

Obito casts another look out at the desert, takes a breath. “Big,” he says grimly. “And it looked fucking _mean_.”

Rin's tightlipped and pale, but she looks from the open expanse of prairie to the horses and then back at the barn. “That place got locks?” she asks.

Sasori glances over at Obito, who nods. “I’ll get the horses,” he says, and has to swallow the last traces of panic as they fade into simple adrenaline. “We should get under cover as quick as possible.”

“No argument from me,” Rin mutters, though she looks more set and angry than terrified. She turns, heading for the house at a trot, and calls, “I’ve got the bags.”

Sasori watches her go, then looks at Obito again. He doesn’t ask anything, but Obito still answers, “It looked like a beast, but it walked on two legs.”

Sasori’s eyes widen, and he nods once, sharply. Turns, vanishes into the barn, and calls back, “Go.”

Obito goes to fetch the horses, in no fit state to argue.

 

 

Morning light leeches little of the foreboding from the desert. There's a stillness to it, watchful, almost intelligent, and Obito has to grit his teeth and force himself not to twitch as he saddles up.

“Full moons are never quite right in these parts,” Rin says, cinching up her saddle on the other side of the post. She sounds cheerful enough, and she looks mostly unconcerned when Obito flicks a glance at her. Her gaze keeps sweeping the desert, though, and her hand is never far from her rifle.

“I would find that more reassuring if last night had been the full moon,” Sasori says dryly. “But it was the last night of the waxing moon.”

Which means, Obito thinks grimly, that tonight is going to be _extra_ exciting. They’ll make it to the hills before they lose the light, and hopefully to Rasa's claim as well, but they should probably plan for the worst-case scenario, which would be camping out in the open.

“The night before, the night of, and the night after the full moon all mean something,” he says, checking the cinch and then moving around to untie Kamui’s rope. “It goes by threes, doesn’t it?”

Rin gives him a veiled look, but doesn’t argue. “Rasa might not like it, but he owes me a favor,” she says. “If we can get to the mine today, he’ll probably put us up.”

Obito thinks of the blue light on the hilltop, rising towards the sky. Ghostly, unearthly blue, not natural at all, and it sends a shiver down his spine. He raises a brow at Sasori, already waiting on Hiruko, and Sasori hesitates for a moment before nodding. They’ll have to keep up with their plan, even if it is a full moon. They're not going to have any more chances at this. Not any so convenient, at least.

“Should reach the hills before noon,” Obito says. “How far from there?”

Rin considers for a moment, frowning faintly. “Maybe another three hours,” she offers. “Four, if the trail got washed out in the spring. Rasa doesn’t tend to keep it up.”

That puts them there in the late afternoon, maybe the early evening. “We’re passing through,” he tells Rin, “and you remembered Rasa, decided we could stay there a night.”

Curiosity flickers over Rin's face, but she nods without asking anything further. “Consider this my thanks for the trick with the marshal’s badge,” she says with a grin, and swings onto her gelding.

Obito gets his foot in the stirrup, then pulls himself up and settles into Kamui’s saddle, checking his supplies one last time before glancing up at Rin. “You’ve got the lead here,” he says, and she laughs and starts her horse walking. The gelding carefully navigates the three ditches, then picks up an easy trot as they cross into the open desert, and Obito breathes out, tipping his hat back a little.

“Tonight,” Sasori says quietly, and there's an intensity carved into the lines of his face, something almost fervent.

“Tonight,” Obito agrees, and gives Kamui her head. She leaps ahead, kicking up her heels with a squeal, then hurtles forward. One powerful leap clears all three of the rings, and she lands, crowhops, and then keeps running, stretching her legs as they fly past Rin. Obito tips his face into the wind, closes his eyes, and lets her run.

 

 

Of course, the peace of the morning can't last. Obito should have been prepared, after the strangeness of the night, but in the daylight the desert simply looks like any other stretch of unsettled land, if more barren than most. Easy enough to forget what it is, in the face of that.

“How did the sheriff even manage to snatch you?” Obito asks Rin, halfway through the morning. The sun is bright, but they're riding away from it, and the shadows stretch long in front of them. There's the remains of a wagon in the distance, just on the edge of Obito's sight, but it’s easy enough to ignore when Rin laughs.

“Luck,” she says. “His good and mine bad. My horse threw a shoe, and I had to go back into town to find a smith, since ours was on a supply run. Stopped at the saloon after, since I didn’t think Kakashi was in town.”

Obito snorts. “Let me guess, the bottom of the barrel bit you hard?” he asks dryly.

“My beau and I had a fight,” Rin admits, unhesitating, and tips one shoulder in a shrug. “She’d have come to get me eventually, but I'm pretty sure she was proving a point making me wait.”

Sasori’s expression is deeply unimpressed, but he just pulls his hat down a little further. He’s always had a low opinion of drinking in dangerous situations, Obito knows.

“You're lucky after all,” he tells Rin, “seeing as you didn’t get hanged.”

“True enough,” Rin concedes with a tip of one shoulder, but she’s still smiling, even if it’s taken on a sharp edge. “But Kakashi’s not going to hang me, no matter how many stages I rob.”

Obito hesitates, but—for the sake of transparency, he says, “He might if he thinks you're branching out in our direction.”

At that, Sasori huffs, but he inclines his head. “Stages are one matter,” he offers darkly. “Murder makes it another.”

For a long moment, Rin is silent. “We’ve been careful not to kill, in our holdups,” she says. “Mostly to avoid getting the rope. But this desert isn't soft, and I've lived in it my whole life. Some of that hardness tends to carry over.”

 Obito can imagine it does. With a grimace, he allows the correction. “Soft isn't exactly the word I’d use for you.”

Rin laughs, like it’s the best compliment she could have gotten. Opens her mouth, and—

“Buzzards,” Sasori says, coolly detached, but his eyes are sharp with interest as he tips his hat back to study the sky. “There.”

Unable to help a glance back at the retreating skeleton of the wagon, Obito reins Kamui in, then asks, “Enough to warrant a stop?”

“Close to the hills,” Sasori says, noncommittal, but Obito can recognize the look on his face. Intent, interest, and the faintest thread of hunger buried beneath the surface.

“Good enough for me,” he allows, and when Sasori kicks Hiruko into a trot, he lets Kamui follow without protest.

“Anything they're still circling must be fresh,” Rin says, shading her face with a hand as she squints up at the circling shapes. “Whatever you're hoping to find, though—”

“I care very little if they're still breathing,” Sasori cuts in before she can finish, which is an exaggeration, Obito knows. Sasori only cares _if_ they're breathing, and whether he can make them stop.

Rin's brows rise, and she aims a speaking look at Obito, who just shrugs. Sasori’s his own type, and Obito's learned not to waylay his wants. They get along, largely because Obito doesn’t give a damn what Sasori does or what his methods are.

They want to kill the same man, too, so at least there's that.

Seeming to take that as answer enough, Rin urges her gelding faster, sending him into a quick trot until she can ride next to Sasori. “There's a dried-up creek that direction,” she says. “Maybe someone went looking for water.”

They wouldn’t have found it anywhere out here, Obito knows. Sometimes, in the depths of winter, flash floods will sweep away huge stretches of land, and there are a handful of rivers that flow from the mountains. Not many, though, and few of them cross the desert itself.

“They may have missed the town,” he says, noncommittal.

“Hard way to die.” Rin's voice is steady, unwavering, and she keeps her eyes forward as the horses pick their way down a steep slope.

“Most are,” Obito mutters, and Kamui takes advantage of having her head to navigate the slope and leaps forward, sliding past Hiruko in a spray of dust and loose rock. Obito curses, grabbing the reins, but she surges up the next ridge, tossing her head, and when Obito tries to pull her up she spins sideways, sliding down into the riverbed at an angle. Given that he raised her from a filly, Obito's too used to her tricks to let them unseat him, and he kicks her, yanks her head around until she’s circling instead of bolting, and drags her to a halt in the middle of the dry creek.

“Damn it, horse,” he snaps, and Kamui tosses her head and dances in place but doesn’t try to run again.

With a groan of irritation, Obito nudges her forward, keeping her to a brisk trot. The vultures are ahead, around a tumble of rock, and when Obito rounds it he can see that whatever they’ve found, it isn't an animal. There's a shred of cloth, then another—the remnants of clothes, Obito thinks, slowing Kamui, then stopping her entirely. He can see pale skin among the bleached stone of the riverbed, paler hair, a body sprawled out like it simply collapsed in the middle of a step and couldn’t gather the strength to rise.

Kamui comes to a stop, ears folding back, nostrils flaring in an unsettled snort. She takes two steps back, which Obito has never seen her do before, not even when they're facing off with mountain lions, and he gives her a startled look, then slides off her back. “Easy, girl,” he says, and Kamui butts him with her head. Butts him _away_ from the body on the ground, like she’s trying to urge him back, out of danger. Obito presses a hand to her white star, then checks that his gun is loose in its holster and drops Kami’s rein on the ground.

“Wait,” he says firmly, one of the few orders she ever follows, and she whickers unhappily but doesn’t move as he turns, picking his way through the boulders. There are a few more shreds of cloth, then the shirt they likely came from, barely recognizable it’s been so tattered. Obito sidesteps it, takes a careful look around the riverbed, but he doesn’t see another horse, or even the tracks of one. Curious, seeing as the body has no boots, just bare feet cut to ribbons by the rocks and sand. Frowning, Obito crouches down beside the body, almost entirely naked and already burning in the hot sun. A man, he thinks, and reaches out, touching one shoulder. Still warm, and though that could be the heat of the day it’s still startling, enough to make him pull back sharply.

Behind him, Kamui paws at the ground, and when Obito glances back at her, he can see the whites of her eyes, the terror-tension of her body.

Grimly, he glances back at the man on the ground, even as the clatter of stone heralds Rin and Sasori’s arrival. The moment their horses are in range, even the normally placid Hiruko gives a high, shrill whinny of alarm, bolting backwards as Sasori curses. Rin's gelding turns to bolt without hesitation, and she shouts, tightens her reins and pulls him up hard.

Obito doesn’t look back. He steels himself, then reaches out, gets a hand on the man’s arm, and rolls him over.

_Oh_ , he thinks, and has to swallow. Has to look away from the slack face, unfairly handsome, and—

He’s still breathing.

The fact is startling, almost bewildering. Obito looks from his chest as it rises to the buzzard crouched on a nearby boulder, and the bird looks hungry. It hasn’t come close, though, and Obito can't help but feel it’s for the same reason Kamui can hardly stand to be near this man. The reaction they’d have to a predator that’s far bigger and deadlier than any sort of coyote, Obito thinks, and has to take a careful breath.

The man has a pretty face, sharp but refined, with a beauty mark below his mouth and a scar that stretches through his left eye. Bruised, too, though that could have been his fall into the riverbed. There don’t seem to be any other marks on him, and there are very definitely no clothes. No weapons anywhere, either, and maybe that shouldn’t be surprising, but—

In this desert, people don’t tend to survive long without a defense of some sort, and it makes Obito entirely wary of this man.

A thud of boots on the hard-packed soil makes him raise his head, and without turning he says, “Still alive.”

Sasori grunts, displeased, but he crouches down next to Obito. “Kamui had that reaction too?” he asks.

Obito nods. “As soon as we were in sight of him.”

He doesn’t have to tell Sasori just how unflappable his mare is, and he already knows how docile Hiruko is on any given day. Strange things don’t rattle them, and they’ve both ridden through blood and magic and thunderstorms and floods without ever once losing control. Nothing natural would give the pair this reaction, and most things unnatural wouldn’t either.

And then, from behind them, there's a sharply indrawn breath.

“ _Kakashi_?” Rin says.


	3. Chapter 3

Obito freezes, casting an alarmed glance over at Sasori. The _sheriff_ is out here in this state? If there are any odds of that, he’d like to see them, and what put the man here as well. It was likely nothing good, given what Rin's said about his skills.

“He’s alive,” Obito says for Rin's benefit. “Looks like he hasn’t been out here too long.”

“He can't have been, seeing as he was just in town day before yesterday,” Rin says grimly, and she kneels down beside the sheriff, checking him over with practiced hands. “Nothing broken,” she says, and pinches him lightly. “Dehydrated, and probably exhausted. That’s some nasty sunburn, too.”

That’s not the reaction of someone more used to a rivalry with the local sheriff, Obito thinks, though he doesn’t say as much. Just trades glances with Sasori, who looks dissatisfied, and then rises to his feet.

“We should get moving,” he says.

Rin's eyes narrow, and she comes to her feet, facing him squarely. “We’re talking Kakashi with us,” she says stubbornly. “He’s no threat like this, and it’s not like either of you is hiding your faces. We can leave him with Rasa, and that will give us plenty of time to get a head start when we leave.”

Obito can see several problems with that plan. Rasa's not the upright type, but if he sees them lugging around an injured sheriff, he might take the opportunity to get in the law’s good graces. Not to mention their horses seem to think Kakashi’s about to eat them. Kamui is the only one who’s willing to stay within a few yards, and even she doesn’t look happy about it.

But—

Muttering a curse, Obito yanks his glove off, then grabs for a card and pulls it out. There's a flicker of _something_ , a thread of icy cold that feels foreign and unsettling in the hot day, but he grits his teeth, raises it in front of Kakashi for one moment, and then flips it over.

A white spire on a black background, a bolt of lightning mid-strike. A falling crown, a fire, the figure of a woman flinging herself from a window to escape the destruction. Obito stares at the image, trying to breathe, trying to _think_ , but—

He never draws Major Arcana cards. He _doesn’t_. Only once before, and on that day, everything ended.

“Obito?” Sasori asks sharply.

Obito grimaces, lets him see the face of the card. “Even cards like Death can be a good sign, sometimes,” he says. “The Tower pretty much never is.”

Sasori’s mouth tightens, but before he can say anything, Rin cuts in. “We’re _not_ leaving him,” she says fiercely. “I promised to get you to the claim, but if we leave him I’ll make sure it takes _weeks_ instead of the rest of today.”

Despite himself, Obito snorts in amusement, tucking the card away and pulling his glove back on. It’s a neat way around her word, and he of all people can respect that.

Sasori scoffs, folding his arms cross his chest. “He’s a sheriff,” he says coolly. “If we save him, we may as well put targets on our own backs. Obito and I need to move quickly, and having a burden like that will slow us down. There are a thousand reasons we should shoot you and him and keep moving with your corpses.”

Rin doesn’t even flinch. “If you want to kill me, try it,” she challenges. “But I know the desert, and I know what’s waiting in the hills. Last night wasn’t even the full moon, and you saw what happened. do you really want to risk another night of that? This time, whatever’s out there is probably going to notice you back.”

For a long moment, Sasori pauses. Then, slowly, he casts a look at Obito, who meets his eyes. The Tower card feels heavy in his pocket, weighty, cold.

“It means chaos,” he says, “or a revelation. A change, either way.”

They've been riding together for over a year now, and if Sasori ever doubted the way Obito's cards work, that doubt has long since been laid to rest. Mouth tight, he tips his head, then asks, “Will Kamui take him?”

Not happily, Obito is sure, but her temper’s good for something. “It’s going to be a fast ride,” he warns, and Sasori smiles, ever so slightly.

“That’s fine. We need to make up time regardless.” He steps back, then says, “You’ll need to use your own water for him if you want to keep him alive.”

“I was planning to,” Rin says, almost a dare. There's fire in her eyes, something like a victory, and Obito feels a twinge deep down in his chest somewhere. She really wants to save Kakashi, even though on the surface they're enemies.

“I have a spare blanket we can wrap him in,” he says, ignoring the dark look Sasori gives him. He’s not going to sling a naked man over his saddle when he has other options. “And rope to tie his hands.”

Tellingly, Rin doesn’t argue that part. Clearly, whatever relationship she and Kakashi have, it’s not entirely helpful to both parties, even if she’s willing to save him. “Thanks,” she says instead. “Appreciated.”

“We’re leaving him with Rasa” Obito warns. “Preferably locked in a room until we leave, or tied up in a barn.”

Rin's laugh doesn’t hold anything of humor. “I've no objection there, Obito,” she says. “Kakashi’s been a pain in my hide for years now. I just don’t want him to die.”

Fair enough, Obito supposes. He doesn’t have anyone he would feel similarly about, but—he did once. And losing him hurt in a way he’d never wish on Rin.

He gets the blanket and rope from his pack, then picks up Kamui’s reins and tugs her a step forward. “You're going to hate this, but try,” Obito murmurs to her, scratching under the fall of her mane. “For me, okay?”

Kamui looks like she’d much rather bolt up the riverbed and never come back, but she follows Obito, one reluctant foot at a time. Obito can still see the whites of her eyes, and she’s tense and almost trembling, but she lets him lead her right up to Kakashi’s still form and then stands as Obito and Rin roll the man up in the blanket.

It’s tempting to just sling him over Kamui’s back like a sack of potatoes, letting his head dangle, but Obito knows better than most the unhappy state of a person’s head after hanging down like that for several hours. Getting him seated on Kamui’s back is harder, but Obito swings up, resettles his packs across Kamui’s hindquarters, and helps Rin haul the limp body up to sit behind the saddle. Sasori only deigns to help after they almost drop Kakashi for the second time, but he comes around to the other side, grabs a flopping limb, and together the three of them get Kakashi up and mostly secure, lashing his hands around Obito's chest and tying his knees to the saddle. Kamui stands stock-still for all of it, ears flat back against her skull and teeth snapping whenever she accidently gets kicked, and when Kakashi is finally up Obito fishes the bag of cinnamon candy out of his pocket and tugs her head around to give her another as a reward.

“Are we finally through with this production?” Sasori asks dryly. He climbs back into Hiruko’s saddle, but even a hard kick can't convince the gelding to approach Kamui and her burden. Rin's horse is in the same state, giving Kamui a wide berth as they start out of the old riverbed.

“You're just disappointed there were no dead bodies,” Obito says dryly, resettling his hat where it was knocked askew. Kamui feels like a champagne cork under him, tense and twitchy and ready to blow at any moment, and it takes more concentration than it normally does to keep her steady, even with the extra weight.

“A dead body would have been far less troublesome, and more useful,” Sasori retorts, ignoring the look Rin gives him.

Rolling her eyes, Rin pulls the canteen from her saddle, then urges her horse closer. He resists, leaping sideways, skittering out of Kamui’s path, and she huffs in annoyance, gives him a hard kick, and forces him closer even as he shies away. When she finally manages to pull up alongside Obito, she leans over, tipping Kakashi’s head back, and asks, “Will this get you bucked off?”

“Kamui uses most everything as an excuse to buck me off,” Obito says with a snort. “Don’t worry about it.”

Rin's laugh is soft, and Obito can feel her hands on Kakashi, can hear the splash as she tips water into the sheriff’s slack mouth. “She’s a hot one,” she agrees.

“Too much desert blood in her,” Obito agrees. “Her dam was from Suna, and her father was a race horse. She never had a chance.”

“He’s swallowing,” Rin says, distracted, and Obito can feel her checking Kakashi’s pulse. “If he wakes up, you’ll be all right?”

Obito jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “That’s why Sasori’s riding behind me,” he says. “He’ll shoot the sheriff if he tries anything.”

Rin doesn’t complain about that, either. “Long as you're not going to get hit by the same bullet, that’s a decent plan,” she says.

 _I’ll survive_ , Obito doesn’t say, because that might raise too many questions. “Sasori’s a good shot,” he offers instead, and feels Rin pull away, her gelding immediately retreating to a safe distance. “Which way are we heading? Kamui needs to run a ways before she’s manageable again.”

Thankfully, Rin doesn’t hesitate to point to the northwest. “Where those two hills come down, there's a canyon. The best path up starts on the other side of it, and there's a spring where we can water the horses.”

That’s enough of a landmark to keep Obito from going the wrong direction. He nods in thanks, then says, “I’ll wait for you up ahead,” and loosens his grip on Kamui’s reins. In an instant, her muscles bunch under him, and she explodes into a gallop, surging up the closest hill and flying across the desert, hooves steady even on the uneven and rocky ground. If the extra weight bothers her, she certainly doesn’t show it, and Obito leans forward over her neck, tangling his hands in her mane, and gives Kamui her head.

 

 

Obito can feel the sheriff start to stir long before he comes fully back to consciousness. It’s enough of a warning to push Kamui into a faster trot towards the walls of the canyon ahead; without Sasori behind him as a threat, Obito isn't willing to risk Kakashi waking up tied to Obito's saddle. There are too many ways for him to make himself a problem.

Thankfully, the canyon is only a few minutes away, and when Kamui picks her way through a scattering of stones, Obito can already hear the sound of running water. Kami can hear it too; her ears prick up, she lifts her head, and suddenly her pace is more eager, practically hurdling the stones as she makes her way down into the ravine. It curves up ahead, the weathered walls of stone rising even higher as the floor of the canyon dips, and in the sunlight that spills down around the bend Obito catches the first flash of greenery. The sight is almost startling after days of the grey-green scrub of the desert, the dry grass of the prairie that came before it, and Obito was born in a world that was grey and faded gold and rarely changed, but he still glories in a touch of green.

It’s more than a touch here, though. The canyon curves into a wide loop, with a looming rock freestanding in the center of a lazy loop of water. The stone itself must be over a hundred feet high, carved by wind into a monolith of red and tawny stone, with rings of black to draw the eye upward. There's a force to it, a majesty. Sentinel stone rising stately above more water than Obito has seen in _months_ , with a ring of trees and green grass spreading out from the water’s edge like ripples. The cliffs around it are massive, at least three hundred feet, and almost sheer, and Obito pulls Kamui up at the very edge of the canyon where it opens onto this scene, caught breathless by the sense of something ancient sleeping here. Not _cruel_ , he thinks, because he’s had more than enough experience to recognize such things, but…wild. Unfamiliar, uncaring of what goes on around it as it sleeps, but watchful all the same.

It’s instinct more than anything that sends Obito reaching for his cards, pulling his glove off and drawing one out before he can think better of it. This one is stained, worn around the edges and splattered with rust-brown, but Obito only briefly brushes his thumb over the marks before he holds it up to face the spring. Something that feels _green_ shivers across his skin, sharp like the aftertaste of lightning, and he breathes through it, the adrenaline rush that rises to meet it, and then flips the card around.

Somehow, it’s no surprise at all to see another trump card.

A man in a golden robe stands with one hand raised towards the sky, the other pointing towards the earth. There’s an infinity symbol crowning his head, and a sword, cup, coin and stave scattered at his feet. The Magician, Obito thinks, rubbing his finger over the number at the bottom of the card. The very first card in the Major Arcana, and the symbol of manifestation and power. Fitting, for this place.

Obito's fingers don’t tremble as they slide the card away, but only with an effort of will. He nudges Kamui forward, and she at least doesn’t feel any hesitance; she heads down the steep dip eagerly, skidding over the rocks and then catching herself as her feet hit grass. Obito lets her go right down to the water before he stops her with a murmured apology.

“One second, girl,” he says, then tugs the rope free of Kakashi’s hands and swings down from the saddle, catching the sheriff before he can collapse over Kamui's neck. A few quick tugs have his legs free, and Obito hauls him down, then drags him over to one of the sturdier-looking trees. Not about to risk the man waking up loose, despite the fact that Obito is armed and the sheriff isn't even dressed, he ties his hands to a lower branch, then wraps the rest of the rope around his blanket-covered torso and the tree’s trunk just to be safe.

Kamui leans over his shoulder as he finishes, looking interested, and lips at the edge of the blanket. When Obito doesn’t swat her away, she sets her teeth in it and tugs, then snorts in disappointment when it doesn’t come off. Apparently the run here was mostly enough to get her over her terror of the sheriff’s presence.

“There are better things for you to be eating around here,” Obito tells her with amusement, then steps back and turns to her saddle, loosening the cinch and pulling it free. He drags the heavy saddle off her back, dumping it a few feet from Kakashi, and then loops her reins around her neck. “Come on, let’s check that water. I don’t want you falling in and not being able to get back out.”

Kamui snorts, offended by the very idea, but she follows Obito placidly enough as he leads her down to the edge of the water, then reaches in, testing the bottom. It’s not too deep, and the bottom seems to slope gradually, so he pulls Kamui's bridle off and steps back. Instantly, she pushes past him, wading out up to her knees and practically shoving half of her head underwater to drink. Once she comes up for air, she paws happily, splashing her belly and chest with cool water, and Obito laughs. He flops down on the bank, stretching his legs out in front of him, and wonders how long they’ll have before Sasori and Rin catch up. Kamui's quick; she could have been a racer with her bloodlines, if Obito hadn’t bought her as a filly, and she came most of the way at a canter or a fast trot. Rin and Sasori’s horses are both heavier-boned and slower, built more for long stretches of endurance and the ability to carry heavy loads. It will likely be a while.

Apparently satisfied with her splashing, Kamui wades back out of the pool, coming over to knock Obito with her nose and push him towards the water. He snorts, batting her away, but she tries again, and with a groan Obito tugs his boots and duster off, then rolls his jeans up as far as they’ll go. “You're a menace,” he tells his horse. “If you want a bath, just roll. I've seen you roll in water before.”

Kamui just nudges him again, hard enough to nearly knock him over, and Obito groans theatrically and grabs her mane. Familiar with this game, she lifts her head, helping to pull him to his feet, and then promptly herds him towards the water, leaping in after him and starting to paw again. It’s enough to make Obito laugh, and he reaches down to splash some water on her sweaty back, letting it sluice off her sides. She whickers with pleasure, then folds down, first to her knees, then all the way until she’s lying in the spring, perfectly pleased with herself.

Snorting, Obito cups a handful of water and pours it over her ears. “You’re ridiculous,” he tells her, and Kamui sticks her head as far under the water as it will go, then comes up with a mouthful of riverweed that she chews at contentedly. Obito shakes his head, gives her another stroke, and wades back up to the bank. He’s wet from all her splashing, but in the heat it’s hardly objectionable, and he’s almost tempted to go for a swim himself. Except—

There's a shift behind him, a stir. Obito glances back at their prisoner, then at the water, and sighs. Grabbing his canteen, he dunks it in a part of the spring that Kamui hasn’t muddied with her birdbath, cursing himself for the impulse. Kakashi should be Rin's problem, and she should be the one taking care of him, but she’s probably an hour behind them and Obito isn't the type to leave a soul who’s dying of thirst staring at a veritable lake just out of reach.

He crouches down in front of Kakashi, tips his head back by the hair, and presses the canteen to his lips. Just a mouthful of water to start, just enough to wet his tongue, but it makes Kakashi turn his head, looking for more before he even comes to consciousness. Obito lets him have it, small sips that won't strain his parched body, and counts ten mouthfuls before he pulls the canteen away completely.

With a sound of complaint, Kakashi twists against the ropes, then freezes. Obito can see the exact moment awareness returns, the sudden stiffening as he realizes he’s tied up, the alarm that sparks through him. His eyes fly open, and panic is stark on his face, confusion quick to follow. More than confusion—this is pure bewilderment, deep and terrifying, the look of a man who has no idea where he is and can't remember the first thing about getting there.

Grey eyes, Obito thinks, though he doesn’t mean to. Kakashi has grey eyes, like storm-clouds on the distant horizon.

“Easy,” he says. “You can have more water in a minute.”

Kakashi’s eyes finally focus on him, calculation flickering for half a second before the confusion returns. “Obito Uchiha,” he says hoarsely, and lets his head fall back against the tree trunk. “Kidnapping people from their beds now?”

Well, it’s not like Obito wasn’t expecting to be recognized, given the way his wanted poster was hanging on the sheriff’s wall. “I found you in the desert, asshole,” he says dryly. “Unless your definition of bed’s a lot looser than mine, I wasn’t kidnapping you from anywhere.”

That just makes the confusion deepen, sharpen, and Kakashi closes his eyes, gritting his teeth. “What day is it?” he asks, and Obito can hardly make out the words, his voice is so rough. Fear, Obito thinks. Maybe resignation, too. Not the reaction he would have expected.

“Full moon tonight,” he says, watching Kakashi’s face carefully. “Beyond that I'm not entirely sure.”

If there's any reaction to his words, Kakashi hides it well. He just tips his head in a halfhearted nod, then says, “More water.”

Obito rolls his eye at the near-order, but puts the canteen to his lips again, trying not to consider the action too closely. “You're welcome for saving you from becoming buzzard food,” he says sourly. “They were closing in when I got there, you know.”

Kakashi takes one last, careful swallow and pulls away. “Seeing as I can't recall needing help,” he says lightly, like it’s a joke even though Obito can hear the thread of tired fear buried underneath, “and that I woke up tied to a tree by a murderer, you’ll have to forgive me for not kissing your boots in gratitude.”

“Bastard,” Obito tells him, then glances up at the sound of hooves on grass to see Kamui pull herself out of the water. She shakes like a dog, then wanders up to nose at Obito's hat. He pushes her away, rising to his feet, and says, “Don’t go far, sweetheart.”

“I,” Kakashi says with dignity, “am _tied to a tree_. And also you need to give me flowers at the very least before calling me something like that.”

Obito splutters, caught off guard, and almost trips over his own feet and right into his saddlebags. “I was talking to the _horse_!” he protests loudly, and as if confirming this Kamui sneezes right in Kakashi’s face.

Obito doesn’t even try to hide his snicker, even as he picks himself up and straightens the saddlebag he kicked. Pleased with herself, Kamui swishes her tail, then decides Kakashi is uninteresting and leaves to find a patch of grass to graze on, though she does stay fairly close. Kakashi watches her go, then glances back at Obito with narrowed eyes, and asks, “What are you doing in Konoha?”

“That doesn’t have a damn thing to do with you—”

“You slaughtered a whole town,” Kakashi says sharply, then catches himself. He takes a breath, and when he speaks again it’s light once more. “I think as sheriff of a similar town I have the right to know just what you're planning.”

Obito doesn’t turn, doesn’t meet his eyes, focuses instead on the jerky and dried fruit in his pack as he tries to breathe evenly. He remembers what he did. He remembers _perfectly_. “Konoha's not on my list of targets,” he says, harsh in his throat. “Don’t worry your pretty little head, Sheriff.”

There’s a long, careful pause. “Pretty,” Kakashi repeats, bemused.

Obito can feel heat washing up his face. “A pretty face with nothing behind it,” he snaps, though meeting Kakashi's eyes feels like it would be a death sentence right now. “What the hell kind of sheriff goes wandering in the desert hours away from their town?”

Something dark and almost angry flickers across Kakashi’s face, but it's buried behind a bullshit smile half an instant later. “The kind who doesn’t expect an infamous outlaw to come wandering into his county,” he retorts. “Looking for another town to terrorize?”

“I already told you I wasn’t,” Obito snaps, and the cold fury that rises in a tide at least replaces the embarrassment. He remembers, for a moment, the smell of smoke, the sound of a gurgling breath, the weight of Madara's hand on his shoulder.

It feels like being smothered. Feels like dying, an inch at a time and all at once, and Obito has to shove to his feet, too angry to stay still. He rounds on Kakashi, ready to grab him, ready to punch—

Kakashi meets his eye, daring him to do it, a challenge in the tilt of his chin and the dark satisfaction in his face.

Obito stops, staring at the asshole, and lets out a shaky breath. Closes his eye, thinks _I won't give him the satisfaction_ , and isn't entirely sure which him he means. Instead, he pulls his hat off, dropping it on top of his saddle, and then strips out of his duster, folding it on top of Kamui's saddle blanket.

“What are you doing,” Kakashi says, and it’s angry, short, sharp. His eyes are narrowed, his body tense, and Obito knows exactly what he’s afraid of, bitter as wormwood on his tongue.

“Swimming,” he says shortly. “Because hopefully that will keep me from punching your teeth in.”

There's a pause, and Obito ignores Kakashi’s shifting expression in favor of getting his vest and then his shirt off. He hesitates over the undershirt for a moment, but even if he hates the scars, he’s not willing to spend the next few hours with wet cloth against his skin just to hide them. Kakashi’s already seen the ones on his face, after all, and on his hands; the rest will hardly be a surprise. Gritting his teeth, he strips the fabric over his head, then unbuckles his gun belt, kicks off his boots, and strips his jeans and underwear down.

“Kamui,” he calls, and the mare lifts her head from her patch of grass, turning to him with interest. Obito jerks his thumb at Kakashi, and says, “Guard.”

“That’s a _horse_ ,” Kakashi says, and he sounds personally offended, which is at least better than afraid. “Not a _dog_.”

“And she’ll kick you like a horse if you try to get out of the ropes,” Obito retorts, and when Kamui trots over to shove her head into his chest, he strokes her forelock and says, “I’ll give you some more candy if you keep an eye on him for me, sweetheart.”

Kamui lips his hair, then deliberately settles herself right next to Kakashi, cropping the grass and swishing her tail contentedly. Obito pats her flank, then tosses his gun belt over his shoulder, pulls his tarot cards from the pocket of his duster, and heads down to the water. The mud from Kamui's splashing is filtering out, but he still picks a spot a little upstream, leaves his things on the bank, and wades in.

“You never answered my question,” Kakashi says after a long moment. “You’ve always kept to the eastern parts of the territory. What brings you all the way out here? A marshal finally manage to catch up to you?”

Obito snorts, ducks under the surface, and comes up again, shaking water out of his eyes. “You could say that,” he says, thinking with amusement of Sasori’s face if he could hear Obito say that.

“But that’s not what _you_ would say.” Because of course Kakashi has to be a perceptive bastard.

For a minute, Obito considers not answering, but—sometimes members of the law can be a little more lenient if they think two problems are going to cancel each other out. “I'm hunting a man,” he says, concentrating on scrubbing several days’ worth of sweat off his skin. “A criminal with a high bounty.”

“If this is a metaphor for finding yourself—”

Obito levels a dark look at Kakashi. “Shut the hell up,” he snaps. “You blind asshole, Madara is in your territory and you haven’t even _noticed_!”


	4. Chapter 4

Dark eyes widen, and Kakashi freezes, perfectly still. For a moment it doesn’t even look like he’s breathing. Then, carefully, he asks, “You mean—”

A whistle cuts him off, wavering as it carries down the canyon. Obito hauls himself out of the water and grabs for his clothes, yanking his jeans on as best he can, then rising to his feet and letting out a higher, sharper whistle in return. Ignoring Kakashi’s wary silence, he wraps his gun belt around his hips, then grabs his cards and straightens, just as the clatter of hooves on stone sounds. Rin's white gelding comes over the edge of the hill first, with Hiruko right behind, and they skid down into the grass, then pull up sharply. Sasori swings off, giving Obito a careful once-over, and nods in greeting.

“No trouble?” he asks.

“Not yet,” Obito says dryly, and raises a brow at Sasori in question. “You caught up fast.”

Sasori smiles back, thin and vicious. “We need to start moving more quickly,” he says, and tips his head to Obito, beckoning him closer. Frowning, Obito steps up to Hiruko’s side, leaning in, and Sasori pulls the flap on one of his saddlebags open.

The sound of rattling china is clear, and when Obito pulls the leather open a little further, he can see the teapot shaking, like the sand inside is throwing itself against the walls in an attempt to get out.

“Damn,” he mutters, rocking back on his heels.

“Precisely,” Sasori agrees, and reties the flap. “Rin says that if we water the horses and move a little faster, we should reach the claim before late evening, even with the delays.”

“Even with the extra weight, too?” Obito asks sourly, glancing back at Kakashi, who’s staring at Rin with something like betrayal on his face.

Sasori tips his head, considering. “We could lose him in the desert,” he suggests with vicious amusement.

“Don’t tempt me,” Obito mutters, and strokes Hiruko’s neck, then steps away. “Spring’s clean.”

“I would hope so, given that you’ve been in it,” Sasori says dryly, but he moves to unsaddle Hiruko. “A quarter of an hour?”

Obito nods. “I’ll get Kamui saddled,” he agrees, and heads for his mare.

Rin is pointedly ignoring the eyes on her back as she works to untack her gelding, but she offers Obito a smile when he approaches, tipping her hat back. “Pretty place, isn't it?”

_Can you feel what’s sleeping here like I can_ , Obito wants to ask, but doesn’t. Madara gave him a lot of things, and Obito only ever asked for a handful of them, but it can still be hard to tell what most people can feel and what’s unique to him. “Very pretty,” he agrees instead, and steps back as she pulls the gelding’s bridle off, sending him off to the spring with a cluck. “Your pet sheriff’s an asshole.”

Rin snorts. “The _biggest_ asshole,” she agrees, and finally glances over at Kakashi. “We saved you out in the middle of the desert, you know, Kakashi.”

As Sasori nears, Obito meets his eyes, holds them as he says, “The good sheriff doesn’t seem to remember anything about what happened after he went to bed a few nights ago.”

Sasori pauses, and the expression that crosses his face is halfway between consternation and intrigue. “Nothing,” he repeats.

“Accused me of kidnapping him from his bed.” Obito knows what Sasori is thinking: there has to be an explanation for that, and it likely doesn’t fall along god-fearing lines.

Rin is silent for a long moment, then crouches down in front of Kakashi, concern on her face. “Kakashi?” she asks. “Are you okay?”

“Terminally disappointed in how your social circle seems to be degrading,” Kakashi says dryly, though his eyes are on Sasori. “Not just one mass-murderer, but two of the worst. You’ve never done things by halves.”

Rin scowls at him, shoving to her feet again. “No, I haven’t,” she agrees archly, and turns. “Got your canteens? I’ll refill them.”

Obito's is still on the ground by Kakashi. “Want more?” he asks the sheriff, dagger-sweet. “Or does water from a mass-murderer not agree with you?”

Sasori snorts, folding his arms across his chest. “Has he even noticed yet?” he asks Obito pointedly.

Kakashi looks from Sasori to Obito and back again. “That Madara is in my territory?” he asks dryly. “I was just informed, thank you. I suppose you're both hunting him, and not here for any nefarious purposes? Like little angels?”

“I would have dropped him in a rattlesnake nest,” Sasori tells Obito, then tips his chin at the cards Obito is still holding. “Will you do a reading?”

Obito blinks, because Sasori asked him for one the day they met and hasn’t asked for another since. “I can do that,” he agrees, and passes Rin his canteen. She smiles at him, looking at the deck with interest, but doesn’t linger, heading down to the water’s edge. Obito glances at Sasori, then at Kakashi, and asks, “Here?”

“The cards you draw will have little meaning to someone who doesn’t know my story,” Sasori says, and settles down on the grass, one knee raised. He takes the cards when Obito offers them, shuffling them with practiced ease, and then passes them back.

“Is this how you choose who you're going to kill next?” Kakashi asks, and his tone is perfectly polite. “Maybe the method of execution? That’s enlightened and esoteric of you.”

“These cards and Rin are the main reason we didn’t leave you as buzzard food,” Obito retorts, taking a seat across from Sasori. He lays the cards out with quick fingers, and this is one skill Madara never taught him, one bit of power that’s his own; Madara always despaired of him finding an outlet for his tricks, and it feels a little like vicious satisfaction that Obito finally did in a method that Madara would have spit on had he seen it.

“Only three cards?” Sasori asks, curious. “The last one was seven.”

“I thought a quick one was best,” Obito says, faintly distracted as he lays a hand over the center card, breathing out. Doing this here, with the strange, ancient awareness all around them, feels a little like a child drawing on the side of a sheriff’s house with paint. There’s no sense of hostility, though, and he steels himself, then reaches over and flips the leftmost card.

A white horse with a fiery mane against a dark blue sky, a man with golden armor carrying a staff on its back. Obito almost winces, because the left card is the past, and he’s always _known_ that the Sasori he met in his hunt is nothing like the person he used to be, but—seeing the Knight of Staves come up as a representation of his past self still hurts, a little. “You were passionate,” he says quietly, and Sasori’s expression darkens. The line of his shoulders goes tense, just a little, and—

“About _murder_?” Kakashi asks, disbelieving.

“Do you really want to make me gag you?” Obito snaps. “Because I’ll do it happily, and I’ll use something you _really_ don’t want anywhere near your mouth, asshole.”

Kakashi pulls an innocent face, like he can't imagine why Obito is angry at him.

Rolling his eye, Obito taps the next card, then flips it over. A reversed card, with a golden figure beneath a white tree, four goblets just out of reach. “You're disillusioned,” he says, “But there's a choice—you can stay as you are, or grasp what you left behind you, refocusing on what you know.”

“Unlikely,” Sasori says shortly, and tips his head, eyes falling on the final card. “The future, I assume?”

Obito nods. He picks it up, turns it over, and lays it back on the grass, then goes perfectly still.

Sasori stares at the card for a long moment, then reaches out and picks it up carefully, between the tips of two fingers. “I suppose I don’t need to ask what this one means,” he says, as dry as the desert around them.

Obito huffs, plucking the Death card from his fingertips. “I told you, Death isn't a bad card,” he says, and frowns at the skeletal knight on its white horse. “That’s the third Major Arcana card I've drawn today. I've never pulled even one before.”

“If it’s not a sign of my imminent demise, what does it stand for?” Sasori asks, though the veiled gaze he casts at the card is cautious.

“Change,” Obito says with a shrug. “Something big is going to happen soon, and you won't be the same on the other side of it. The other cards usually give a clue about whether it will be good or bad, but—not this time.”

For a long moment, Sasori considers that, before he takes a breath and rises to his feet. “No outright sign that we should turn back, at least,” he says. “Acceptable. Perhaps your cards are reacting to the power of what we’re attempting.”

“Maybe.” Obito turns the death card over in his fingers, frowning, and says, “Be careful either way.”

Smirking, Sasori offers him a hand, and when Obito takes it, he pulls him to his feet without effort. “Concern for your companion? How sentimental.”

“Sasori—”

Sasori cuts him off with a finger over his lips. “I am aware of the risks, Obito,” he returns, and one corner of his mouth curls. “And the source of sentimentality, as well.”

Obito rolls his eye, tugging Sasori’s hand away from his mouth. “You're a repressed bastard,” he says, but fondly. It’s been a long year, and he and Sasori have fallen into bed together more than once. Easier to trust someone when you’ve seen them vulnerable, after all. And besides, they all get lonely once in a while.

With a quiet snort, Sasori moves away, collecting his bridle and heading towards the spring. “Saddle up your monster,” he calls over his shoulder. “We should move quickly.”

Sighing, Obito grabs his shirt and duster, dragging them on and then fishing a cinnamon candy out of his pocket. Instantly, Kamui—who’s been lurking behind him since he sat down—shoves her head over his shoulder to grab it, then crunches happily at it.

“You're a menace,” Obito tells her, but he tosses the saddle blanket over her withers, settles the saddle on top of it, and tightens the cinch.

“Was that little display meant to inspire sympathy?” Kakashi asks after a moment. When Obito glances up from checking Kamui's shoes, the sheriff is watching him, an odd expression on his face. “Love between criminals?”

“I really should just leave you there,” Obito mutters, but he loops the reins around Kamui's neck and focuses on getting her bridle on. “Sasori’s my friend, Sheriff. Leave it the hell alone.”

“ _Friend_ ,” Kakashi says. “Yes, that’s the word I would use too.” Apparently catching Obito's warning look, he sighs and spreads his fingers in a sign of surrender. “Are you going to tell me where you're dragging me next, now that you’ve _saved_ me?”

“Rasa's claim,” Obito says shortly, and offers Rin a smile as she leads her gelding closer. “Good to go?”

“I think so,” Rin agrees. “I think the horses drank all they could.” She casts a glance at Kakashi, then asks, “Kakashi, are you going to make yourself a problem if we cut you loose?”

“I would never be a problem,” Kakashi says virtuously, and when Rin raises a doubtful brow, he wiggles his bound hands. “Rin, I'm _naked_. If I move too fast, I’ll lose my blanket.”

Rin hums, vaguely doubtful. “Where are your dogs, Kakashi?” she asks quietly.

Kakashi freezes, and Obito can see the color leech from his face. “What?” he rasps.

“You took them with you the other day,” Rin says, almost gently. “The whole pack. They left town with you. So where are they now?”

Kakashi’s breath shakes as it emerges, and he closes his eyes, ducking his head. “I don’t know,” he says, and it’s ragged. “I can't—I can't remember.”

“They might have ended up at Rasa's.” Rin crouches down next to Kakashi, carefully undoing the knots, and pulls the ropes free. “We’re headed there now. He may have seen them, or at least heard them.”

Kakashi nods without answering, but rises to his feet, wrapping the blanket around himself more securely. When Rin offers him a length of rope with a cheeky smile, he sighs and takes it, wrapping it around his waist in a makeshift belt. “Am I going to have to try and arrest you for stealing Rasa's gold?” he asks warily.

“We don’t want his gold,” Obito says, aggrieved, and swings onto Kamui's back. He nudges her sideways, then leans over, kicking his foot free of the stirrup and offering Kakashi a hand. “Come on, the other horses think you're diseased, so you're stuck with Kamui.”

Kakashi eyes the mare warily, and she’s watching him in return, ears back. With a resigned sigh, he takes Obito's hand, gets a foot in the stirrup, and scrambles up as best he can. “And here I was expecting you to make me walk.”

“I would, but we need to make it to the claim before dark, and you don’t even have shoes on.” Obito waits for Sasori and Rin to mount, then urges Kamui towards the rise. “Rin, how far?”

“Not too much more,” Rin says, shading her eyes to scan the hills. “The path up is about a mile from here, but the actual route up is steep. Might take the horses a bit to manage it, but we’ll still get there before evening.”

“Good enough,” Obito decides, and lets her take the lead, urging Kamui into a swift trot as Sasori falls in beside him. Kakashi’s arms are tight around his chest, but Obito only spares a moment to be sure that his hands aren’t anywhere close to Obito's gun—and that Sasori is watching, ever-cautious—before he pushes Kamui into a canter.

 

 

Rasa's claim is high up in the hills, just below the line where dark scrub gives way to pines. It’s flanked on all sides by steep hills, barely enough room in the tiny dell for the weathered shack, an outbuilding, and a corral with a pair of donkeys. Obito eyes the setup, wary of any movement, but he can't see any sign of human presence. The barn they passed down the hill had three horses present, though, and an old wagon; and Obito didn’t see any tack missing. Rasa is likely here somewhere.

“I don’t know what you're expecting here,” Kakashi says, “but Rasa's more likely to take my side here than yours.”

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you weren’t worried he wouldn’t,” Rin says peaceably enough, then pulls her gelding to a stop and calls, “Rasa? It’s Rin Nohara.”

There's a long, long stretch of silence. Obito frowns, glancing over at Sasori, who looks little happier. He leans back, tugging his saddlebag open slightly, and then nods to Obito; inside the teapot, the sand is still reacting, so they're in the right place. There's no sign of a struggle, though, but also no sign of life.

And then, from the window of the cabin, a voice calls, “And who’s that with you, then?”

Rin laughs, leaning forward to wave. “The sheriff!” she calls back. “And some new friends. Is that you, Yashamaru?”

There's another long pause, but finally the door rattles like a lock being undone, and a moment later it swings open. The man who steps out is slim and pretty, with golden hair and a tired face, but he holds the shotgun he’s carrying like he knows perfectly well how to use it. “Rin,” he says, with something like relief, and his eyes slip over Sasori, then Obito, before finally settling on Kakashi.

It says something, Obito thinks, that the sheriff’s presence makes him stiffen faintly.

“Sorry to intrude, Yashamaru,” Rin says warmly, and slides off her horse, waving a hand at the rest of them. “This is Rasa's brother, Yashamaru.”

“Brother-in-law,” Yashamaru corrects, just a little sharp, but he comes down the steps with a smile, reaching out for Rin. She catches his hand, pulling him into a hug, and he hugs her back but doesn’t let go of the rifle. When he pulls back, he asks, “What are you doing all the way up here? Konan and the others were by two days ago, and they said you were stuck in Konoha.”

Rin laughs, jerking a thumb at Obito and Sasori. “Those new friends I mentioned got me out. We found the sheriff in a bit of trouble on our way here.”

Yashamaru glances at Kakashi again, taking in the blanket, and smothers a chuckle behind one hand. “So I see,” he says.

Obito's close enough to hear Kakashi’s aggrieved sigh, and it makes him grin. “Nice to meet you,” he offers, nodding, and glances over at Sasori, raising a brow. Sasori inclines his head, too, but he looks Yashamaru over closely for a moment before he dismounts.

“You're here alone?” he asks.

Yashamaru’s mouth tightens, and he raises his chin. “He’s down in the mine,” he says. “Should be back for dinner, though. Do you need him?”

“Access to the mine,” Sasori says, and then, “We’re here about the missing children.”

Yashamaru’s eyes widen, and suddenly his whole stance changes, the hostility falling away. “You are?” he asks, and swallows. “I thought—Gaara's been missing for a _week_ now.”

Obito very carefully doesn’t allow himself a reaction, though he’s not entirely sure why Sasori is using that excuse. Isn't entirely sure why it doesn’t sound like an excuse, either. The words make Kakashi tense, too, but Obito doesn’t glance at him, just slides off of Kamui's back and offers Kakashi a hand down. “Want me to get you a stepladder?” he asks mockingly.

Kakashi very deliberately kicks him in the chest as he swings his leg over to slide down. “Oops,” he says, without an ounce of sincerity.

Growling, Obito advances but before he can take more than one step, Rin grabs Kakashi’s arm. “Come on,” she says firmly. “Yashamaru, you have a room with a lock available? I’d rather not get dragged back to Konoha because the sheriff’s feeling tricky.”

“Rin, I'm going to make you muck out the livery for _months_ ,” Kakashi threatens, trying to get out of her grip, but he has to grab his blanket before it can hit the ground. “Don’t you _dare_.”

“The shed,” Yashamaru says, and when Kakashi levels a glare at him, he smiles a little apologetically. “Sorry, sheriff, but this part of the territory doesn’t have a charter,” he says. “It ends near the base of the hills. You don’t have any authority here, and Rin's a friend.”

Something cold slips down Obito's spine, and he glances over at Sasori, only to find him looking back, just as unsettled as Obito feels. The charter’s binding, and not just to mortal law. If Madara deliberately came out here, beyond its influence, there's a hell of a lot he could be doing.

“I’ll get you some clothes, at least,” Yashamaru says, opening the shed door and letting Rin push Kakashi inside. He pulls the door closed without hesitation, bolting it, and says, “What do you need from me?”

“Access to the mine,” Sasori says, and he’s already digging through his saddlebags, coming up with the teapot and spool of golden thread. “He’s been gone a week?”

“Six days,” Yashamaru allows. He grips the rifle tightly for a moment, then says, “I’ll come with you. I might not know the mine as well as Rasa, but I still know it.”

Obito can't quite pull his eyes away from the locked door. He takes a breath, rubbing a hand over his patch, and shakes himself. “The moon’s rising soon, Sasori,” he warns.

“I'm aware,” Sasori says shortly, but he follows Obito's stare, then huffs. “You think that something will happen?”

“I think it’s suspicious as hell that he disappeared right before the full moon and doesn’t have any memory of what happened,” Obito says. There are two mineshafts in the hill, one set higher in the hill, and he assesses it, then the lower one, and raises a questioning brow at Sasori.

Sasori frowns, but he looks from one to the other as well. “Dangerous,” is his assessment. “But if Madara only expects one of us, it will certainly be helpful in the long run.”

“ _Madara_?” Yashamaru says in alarm. “As in Madara _Uchiha_? He’s _here_?”

“Apparently,” Sasori says dryly. He hesitates, considering, and then asks Obito, “You’re sure?”

Obito shrugs. “Better to keep him where we can see him,” he says. “And if you're right about the children—”

“I am.” There's no doubt in Sasori’s voice just grim certainty. “You know Madara's history.”

Fuck. Obito does, and that’s the problem. He scrubs a hand over his face again, then turns. “Clothes for the asshole?” he asks Yashamaru.

Yashamaru doesn’t hesitate. “He can borrow some of Rasa's,” he says, and heads back inside the house.

“I hope you don’t think you're leaving me out of this, either,” Rin says, folding her arms over her chest and leveling a stubborn look at Obito and Sasori. “I've met Gaara, and he’s sweet. You really think he’s down there?”

“Something certainly is,” Sasori says, and offers her the teapot so she can see the swirling sand. “Madara is after the old gods, and he’s been looking for a way to control them. That’s a piece of the youngest one, and we can assume he has the others as well. If he’s found the method, and the children…”

Rin takes a breath, nods with determination and something like fury in her eyes. “Let me get my shotgun,” she says, hands it back, and heads for her horse.

There's a polite knock from the inside of the shack. “Does this mean you're going to let me out?” Kakashi asks wryly. “Or should I make myself comfortable in here?”

Obito rolls his eye, but pulls the door open. “Do you want Madara dead?” he asks bluntly. “And do you want those kids found?”

Kakashi doesn’t move, one shoulder propped against the doorframe. “You're going on a lot of conjecture,” he says, watching Obito evenly. “There's no saying that Madara is even down there.”

“What part of _we tracked him here_ is hard for you to grasp?” Obito retorts, bristling. “Listen, asshole, I want to kill that man more than I've ever wanted anything _in my life_ —”

“Why?” Kakashi asks, and his gaze doesn’t waver, steady and sharp. “What makes a man like you so focused on one single outlaw, no matter how terrible? Why—”

“Because he’s the one who made me!” Obito snarls, and it’s almost a relief when Sasori grabs his arm, dragging him back a step. He turns away, furious, disgusted, and—

“All right,” Kakashi says lightly, and takes a step past them to take the clothes from Yashamaru as he returns. “That’s fair.”

Obito blinks, startled. He turns back, practically gaping at Kakashi, but the sheriff just sails back into the shed and closes the door. Cloth rustles, and Kakashi asks, “I don’t suppose you're willing to give me a gun?”

“How about a really big stick?” Rin offers sweetly, though there's concern in her eyes as she glances at Obito, and she reaches out to touch his arm. Obito doesn’t shake her off, just offers her a strained smile.

The door opens, and Kakashi gives Rin a lazy salute. “A stick will do,” he agrees. “Can it be pointy?”

“I don’t trust you _that_ much,” Obito retorts, but he eyes the sheriff warily. “Are you going to try to club me the second we’re alone?”

“Only if I'm worried for my virtue,” Kakashi says, almost cheerfully, but he meets Obito's gaze and says, “I’ll wait until Madara is dead and we’ve rescued the kids to remember my job.”

Obito isn't asking for more. He nods grimly, then asks Sasori, “Lower or upper?”

Sasori checks the teapot. “Lower,” he says. “I’ll prioritize getting the children out.”

“And I’ll prioritize smashing Madara's skull in,” Obito mutters, and jerks his head at Kakashi. “Come on, the moon’s going to rise in an hour.”

“How terrifying,” Kakashi says blandly, but he follows at Obito's heels as he goes to tie Kamui at the corral, then heads up the steep path to get to the higher shaft. “Where’s my stick? I was promised a big stick and I'm holding you to that.”

There's what looks like the broken shaft of a pickax leaning against the edge of the shaft, and Obito picks it up and tosses it to Kakashi. “Enjoy,” he says sweetly.

Kakashi swings it once, testing, then drops it over his shoulder with a shrug. “Appreciated,” he says.

“Don’t mention it,” Obito says, a little sourly, watching Sasori tie his thread to a post. He raises a hand to Obito before he heads in, Yashamaru and Rin behind him, and the darkness swallows them almost immediately.

“Sure you want to do this?” Obito asks, straightening. He meets Kakashi’s eyes, but Kakashi’s gaze is set, unwavering.

“Are you?” he returns, and it’s not derisive. Curious, almost, and Obito laughs, ragged in his throat.

“Not a chance in hell,” he says, and steps into the darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

“So what does it take to make a killer?” Kakashi asks in the darkness of the mineshaft, soft enough that the words won't echo.

Obito thinks about not answering, thinks about pushing him down the next drop-off they find. When he takes a breath it shakes a little, and he rubs at his stinging eye for half a moment before he drops his hand.

“There are old things out in the desert,” he says. “Madara's one of them.”

There's a long, long moment of silence, like Kakashi is waiting out the remainder of his explanation, like he’s braced for some qualifier but somehow even less relieved when none appears.

“Old,” he finally says, and it sounds like it should be a question but instead just comes out flat.

Obito doesn’t look back at him as he ducks a span of spiderwebs strung across the tunnel like thin ropes. “Yeah, old. Do you know how long he’s had that wanted poster now?”

Kakashi doesn’t answer, but he makes a soft, aggravated sound, batting the spiderweb’s floating strands away from his face. “I don’t see how that ties in with you,” he says mildly. “Or why you massacred a whole town, _Obito_.”

The name is a curse. It’s one Obito deserves, though, so he doesn’t even try to glance back. He’s known since the moment he realized what Madara had done that there was no saving his own soul. “Don’t worry,” he snaps, “I'm not after your town now. Not that you were there to save them when I got there.”

There's a breath, ragged like a wound in the darkness. “I wouldn’t leave my town undefended,” Kakashi says, but it sounds like bewilderment more than defense, carefully buried but still seeping through the cracks. “I can't—it’s—”

Obito stops, not quite able to help himself, and doesn’t protest even when Kakashi practically crashes into his back. Turns, instead, grabbing Kakashi’s wrist, and concentrates for one half-second as he pulls a card out of his pocket.

There's a flicker, a kindling. The card lights, growing brighter until it’s a white beacon in the darkness of the tunnel, and Obito can almost see an image out of the corner of his eye, a robed man with a black crown lifting a palmful of fire towards the heavens to spread the light around them. It throws Kakashi’s face into relief, almost too clear against the shadows, and Obito meets his calculating stare, tightens his grip on Kakashi’s arm.

“Don’t,” he says harshly. “Whatever idiotic thing you're thinking, _don’t_. If Madara is here, there's no way he was ever going to let the sheriff walk around free. I don’t know what happened to you, but—it was probably him. If you left your town, and you wouldn’t normally, it was _definitely_ him.”

“You seem very certain,” Kakashi says, but he looks away, gaze slipping past Obito and into the darkness. If he sees the ghostly King of Staves hovering over them, he doesn’t show it.

“If anyone could be, it’s me.” Obito snorts, without any humor behind it. “I was his—he raised me. I thought I was an orphan he’d picked up somewhere, and he never told me any different, but he taught me…”

_Everything_ would be a lie. Madara kept his secrets greedily tucked away, only passed on precisely what would make Obito the most useful to him. And Obito _knew_ that, even at the time, but it was so much easier to be what Madara wanted of him. So much easier just to _exist_ instead of fighting against a man with a world of darkness in his eyes.

“How to be a criminal,” Kakashi fills in, desert-dry, and Obito can't help the bark of laughter that escapes him.

“That too,” he agrees, and lets Kakashi go. “I don’t—”

“—want to hurt my town,” Kakashi cuts in again, and when Obito scowls at him for it he smiles, just a little. “I think I'm starting to see that.” Another pause, carefully considering, and he asks, “Why not leave me at the spring?”

Obito can't say he hadn’t considered it, just for a moment, but… “You would have come after us,” he says, “or tried to walk back to Konoha. And your idiotic ass would have died in the middle of the desert somewhere in the process. I don’t like my hard work going to waste.”

Kakashi hums, only mildly disbelieving. “Well,” he says mildly. “A criminal with a conscience. That’s rare.”

Rolling his eye, Obito turns away. “Come on,” he mutters. “Sasori gets impatient easily. If we’re too late he’ll go in without us.”

“You know who he is, don’t you?” Kakashi asks, but he falls into step with Obito as they follow the slope of the tunnel down. “And who he was—”

“A war hero,” Obito snaps, and wants to bristle, even if it’s hard when Kakashi shows no reaction. “He fought for the governments, but he became a marshal, and—”

“My father,” Kakashi says very deliberately, “fought for the territories, and he’s the one who killed Sasori’s parents.”

Obito almost misses his next step in shock. “ _What_? But—”

“I assume he knows,” Kakashi says right over top of him. “There's only one Hatake family, and my father’s career as a soldier and a sheriff might have ended prematurely, but it wasn’t exactly low profile.”

Obito certainly hasn’t heard of it, not that that means much of anything. He spent most of his formative years under Madara's thumb, and Sasori is only a few years older than him.

Before he can think of anything to say, Kakashi looks away, turns his gaze to the dark tunnel ahead of them. “I assume he thinks the way my father’s life ended is revenge enough,” he says lightly, as if it’s of no consequence. Pauses, for so long Obito thinks he’s not going to continue, and then says very softly, “My father started blacking out, too. Right before the end. He kept waking up in strange places, with no memory of how he got there.”

Despite himself, Obito winces. In light of that, Kakashi might actually be handling waking up naked in the desert with a decent amount of grace, his taunts directed at Obito aside. “Long blackouts?” he asks.

Kakashi hums. “At least one night, and usually more,” he allows. Doesn’t glance over at Obito, but says, “If Madara is the one behind me being out of town—if I have what my father did—”

_Right before the end_. Obito's willing to assume that means Kakashi’s father died, and not well. But it means that there's a chance Madara had something to do with that, too. He’s certainly been around long enough to manage it.

“If we turn Madara upside down and shake him hard enough, something like the truth might fall out,” Obito says dryly, and Kakashi snorts.

“We can each take a leg,” he agrees, and then pauses, tilting his head. His eyes narrow, and it’s enough of a wary expression that Obito pauses too, watching him.

A hesitation, and then Kakashi says quietly, “Put out the light.”

The idea of being trapped in the darkness with something Kakashi can clearly sense makes all the hairs on the back of Obito's neck rise, but he grimaces, twists the card into its reverse position, and restrains a wince when the light goes out in an instant. Stuffing the card back into his pocket, he takes a step to the side, reorienting himself with the heat of Kakashi’s body as an anchor, and murmurs, “Something ahead?”

There's a long, long silence, and then Kakashi shakes his head. “Behind,” he says, and Obito feels the graze of fingers over his wrist where it’s bared by his glove. The touch is warm-hot in the cool darkness, makes Obito's breath hitch before he can control his reaction, but Kakashi isn't paying attention. He turns, stepping back against the tunnel wall, and flattens himself there. Obito does the same, not about to question any instinct that might keep them alive, and closes his eye, evening out his breaths until there's complete silence around them. For a long moment, there's no trace of anything else, no hint of movement—

And then, just faintly, a scrape.

Obito can feel the tensing of Kakashi’s body, the careful stillness, and he shifts his pistol, tightens his finger on the trigger as the next scrape comes. It’s closer this time, and along with it is a rasp, like scales. _Big_ , Obito thinks, and nearly startles when Kakashi touches his wrist again. He slides Obito's sleeve up just a little, presses a touch to the skin of his forearm, and traces out a word. No way to tell if it’s a guess or a certainty, not without speaking, but—

_Snake_ , Obito thinks with a grimace. Yeah, he’d been assuming that too. Snakes might not be able to see well, but they can still definitely sense them in the dark, and there's no easy way to hide from them. No easy way to get out of range, either, when they don’t have any idea of its size.

Turning his hand over, he catches Kakashi’s bare palm, writes _Rasa_ across his skin and finishes with a question mark. Unlike Sasori, he doesn’t have the luxury of a familiarity with Rasa, and while Sasori didn’t say anything about Rasa being _different_ , it’s possible that he doesn’t know. Rasa was only briefly a marshal, and as far as Obito knows he and Sasori never worked directly together.

After a moment, Kakashi repeats the question mark on Obito's forearm, and Obito grimaces. No good way to tell, then. No chance to reason with the thing, either; Obito would rather not try it when the chances of him ending up dead for it are high.

There's a rasp of scales across stone, a low, rattling hiss in the darkness, and Obito closes his eye, trying to focus. His gun is in his hand, but the noise of it might alert Madara. He has his cards, but there's always the chance that drawing one will mark their presence more than movement alone would; a lot of old things out in the desert have a better sense of the oddness than they do the actual world.

The hand on Obito's wrist turns to a grip, tight and urging him sideways, and Obito moves with it without having to think about the motion, slides across the wall with care so that his clothes don’t make a sound. There's a faint brush as Kakashi follows him, both of them slipping down the tunnel with their backs to the wall and the hiss of something very large slithering just a few yards away. Fear beats a tattoo in Obito's throat, but the sound isn't getting closer. There's no mark of the thing following them, no pursuit—

Obito's foot hits something hard, with just a little give. Like flesh, he thinks, and feels his stomach drop. Oh _fuck_.

There's seething hiss, a surge of motion. Obito throws himself at Kakashi, toppling him to the floor and rolling out of the thing’s path, and just feels the slide of scales miss his cheek. Feels breath, and something wet, and the sharp line of a fang, and then Kakashi is up and pulling him to his feet. Obito staggers one step, but he already has a hand in his coat, feels the first card come to his fingers—

With a snarl, Kakashi shoves Obito back, steps right in front of him, and Obito can feel the impact of his body catching a blow and holding. He wrenches the card out of his pocket, flips it up into the air and shoves his will into it, and with a surge of light the King of Staves rises above them, palm-full of fire lifted high. The light fractures off crystalline white scales, golden eyes and dripping fangs, the massive coils of a vast snake looped all around them. Kakashi has it by the snout, straining against its jaws as it shoves closer, trying desperately to shake him off.

Obito only needs one glance to know that his pistol won't do anything here. With a curse, he ducks past Kakashi, grabbing for the knife in his boot, and rises sharply, putting all of his weight behind the blow. The snake sees the blade aimed for its throat, and with a wrench it flings Kakashi away, right into the wall of the tunnel, and recoils before Obito's blade can strike. Its tail rises, lashing, and Obito twists around it, leaps its hard blow and almost lands on another coil, only just manages to redirect in time. He staggers, drives an elbow hard into the hinge of its jaw as it grabs for him, and rolls under its next bite.

By then, Kakashi is there, grabbing it by the mouth, hauling it to the side to slam it into the wall like he’s returning the favor. The snake snaps, hisses, and Obito casts a glance ahead of them in the shifting shadows, catches half a glimpse of a dark opening, and snatches his card out of the air. It goes dark instantly, and Obito has to trust his memory to guide him as he takes three long strides, catches Kakashi around the waist, and hauls him forward into the darkness. Kakashi yelps, half surprise and half protest, but Obito's outstretched hand finds a gap in the tunnel wall, too narrow for the snake’s bulk, and he stuffs himself through it, drags Kakashi along with him, and feels the ground disappear to nothingness as they fall down, down, down into a depthless black.

 

 

The return of consciousness hurts more than Obito expects, which is saying something. He groans, but as soon as he registers awareness he’s already forcing himself up, one elbow braced beneath him and his entire body one sharp ache.

There's light, is the first thing he realizes when he opens his eye. Small, flickering, but there—candlelight, instead of the pure brilliance of his cards. It flickers across Kakashi’s face as he leans over Obito, and the bruise on his cheek is only half-visible in scattered glimpses as the shadows dance. Obito stares at him for a moment, uncomprehending, before he remembers the fight in the tunnel, the snake, and groans. He lets himself flop back to the ground, appreciating the fact that he feels like he has more bruises than skin right now, and yanks his patch down a little more securely.

“You know,” Kakashi says conversationally, “I thought you were dead, for the first few minutes.”

“Being dead would probably hurt less,” Obito mutters, but he squints up at Kakashi and asks, “All in one piece, asshole?”

Kakashi hums, and there's something on his face that the firelight keeps Obito from reading. “You could have left me to fight it,” he says, instead of answering. “I could have been the distraction, and you could have kept going after Madara.”

Obito pauses, blinks. Blinks again, because…he hadn’t even thought of that. It had never even crossed his mind. It’s absolutely a strategy that Madara would have used, would have taken advantage of in a heartbeat and without hesitation. But—

That he didn’t do it means something. That he didn’t even _consider_ it says a hell of a lot.

Tipping his head back, Obito laughs, ragged and half-strangled by the sheer _relief_ that’s rising in his chest. It hurts, almost, feels like a flood of fire in his veins, and it’s such a small, stupid, useless thing, but Obito still can't believe it. Can't believe he _beat Madara_ , even this much.

“That _bastard_ ,” he says, still choking on his laughter. “That fucking _bastard_ , I didn’t even _think of that_. Fuck, I hope Madara chokes knowing I didn’t.”

There's a long pause, as Kakashi probably contemplates just how screwed in the head Obito is and Obito can't even be bothered to care. Then, with a quiet snort, he settles back on his heels, letting his hands dangle between his knees, and says dryly, “Well, I certainly appreciate it.”

“Don’t let your head fill up with stupid ideas,” Obito says, but it doesn’t have a bite to it. “The snake just distracted me. Otherwise I would have left you to die.”

Kakashi makes an agreeable sound. “Of course, of course. You're dastardly and evil, I remember.”

Obito makes a rude gesture, then carefully rolls over and eases up. The ache in his bones is already fading, and though a cracked rib pulls slightly, he ignores it, glancing unto the darkness above them. The light from the candle doesn’t go far, and there's nothing but velvety blackness beyond it.

“There's a tunnel,” Kakashi says, nodding over Obito's shoulder, and Obito glances around to take in the narrow, rough-hewn opening. The path through it slopes upward, which is probably a good sign.

“Did we fall far?” Obito asks, checking for his cards, then his gun. His knife must still be in the tunnel above, with the snake, which is a shame; he liked that knife.

Kakashi tips one shoulder in a shrug. “I couldn’t tell,” he says. “But it may have been fifty feet.”

The weight of eyes on Obito is tangible, but he ignores it. A normal human couldn’t have survived that fall onto solid earth, and Obito is well aware of it, but neither he nor Kakashi is dead. They're both alive, both keeping secrets, both something else. Instead, he looks around them, taking in the small, neat stack of supplies, the crates against the wall. This must be a storage area, or maybe where Rasa's looking to expand. It explains the candle, at least.

“No sign of the snake, either?” he asks.

“Not yet.” Kakashi casts a glance above them again. “One of Madara's?” he asks quietly.

Obito pauses. He’d been thinking of it as something natural, native to the earth here, but—it being Madara's guard makes a lot more sense. Makes things a lot harder, too; there’s every chance Sasori, Yashamaru, and Rin are going to run into something similar. Sasori can take care of himself against most things, but…Obito still doesn’t like it.

“Possibly,” he says unhappily, and rakes a hand through his hair, trying to calculate where they are. Deep, if they fell fifty feet—they must be below where Sasori, Rin, and Yashamaru entered, which means they're going to have to move quickly. Leaving the others close to Madara for any extended period of time is just asking for trouble, no matter how stealthy they can be.

With a hum, Kakashi tips his head towards the tunnel. “There only seems to be one exit.”

Right. At least that cuts down on their options of where to go. With a groan, Obito levers himself to his feet, then offers Kakashi a hand. “Guess we won't have to flip a coin to see which way to go, then,” he says dryly.

There's a pause, and Kakashi gives his hand an odd look, flicks a glance up at Obito's face before he carefully, deliberately sets his fingers against Obito's and lets Obito pull him up as well. “A coin, instead of a card?” he asks.

Obito tips one shoulder in a faintly painful shrug. “The cards aren’t usually as clear as a coin toss,” he says. “They’re more vague hints than clear direction. Madara can't block hints, though.”

“Block,” Kakashi repeats, eyes narrowing.

Scoffing, Obito takes a step to test his balance, decides it’s good enough, and starts moving. Kakashi follows at his heels, carrying the candle. “Why do you think bounty hunters and marshals and sheriffs in six territories have been looking for Madara going on twenty years now, and never gotten a hint as to where he is? Madara keeps them looking elsewhere. But he can't block us, not with how we’re tracking him.”

“You followed part of an old god here,” Kakashi says evenly, but Obito can feel sharp eyes on his back. “That’s what Sasori was showing you, by the spring, and what you showed Rin.”

Obito nods once, because that’s hardly something he needs to keep a secret. “Nine pieces of creation, split apart to keep them from being too powerful. Madara wants to stuff them into hosts and use them for something.”

“ _Something_?”

Pointedly, Obito ignores the question. “How’s your sense of direction?”

“We’re going the same direction as we were before the fall.” Kakashi pauses, considering, and then asks, “You were Madara's ward, and he still didn’t share his plans?”

Obito doesn’t want to talk about this. Up in the tunnel was hard enough, carried by tightly-wound emotions, and here and now it’s even worse. “I failed,” he says shortly, and it’s still bitter, even so many years later. Obito doesn’t _like_ failing, and even though what Madara wanted of him was terrible, even though he’d been raised for it, groomed to follow in Madara's footsteps—

He’d failed at what Madara wanted him to do, and the only man he’d ever wanted to please had turned on him. Madara had hissed a secret in his ear, shocking, _horrifying_ , and then disappeared, and—

Obito still blames himself for what happened. Madara's actions, blood on Madara's hands, but on Obito's too. If he’d been better, quicker, smarter, maybe he could have saved his parents. maybe he could have saved more than a handful of children and the brave young woman who fought so hard to change his mind. She managed it, she won, and Obito lost.

He lost a hell of a lot in that moment, and he’s still not entirely sure he’s convinced it was worth it.

Nothing about him is good, and that doubt most of all.

“Oh no,” Kakashi says, perfectly bland. “You failed at being as terrible as Madara? How shocking. How _awful_. Truly, you're a failure all around—”

“Shut _up_ ,” Obito snaps, and it _aches_ like a mule-kick in the ribs as he rounds on Kakashi. “Fuck you, you don’t have the first damn idea what—”

Kakashi grabs him in a blur of motion, seizes his arms and hauls him forward just as his heel hits empty air. Obito swallow a yelp as he’s jerked right into Kakashi’s space, colliding with his chest hard enough to make them both stumble, but Kakashi keeps an arm around him, pulls him back three long steps, and stops short.

“Careful,” he says, as though he isn’t a little breathless as well.

Obito feels heat rising in his face, jerks away and turns. In the flickering light of the candle, he can see the drop-off he almost tripped over, the sudden absence of solid ground where the path falls away. Grimacing, he edges closer, testing the ground carefully, and reaches out to feel the edges of the cliff.

“There are hooks,” he says, and leans over the precipice carefully. “Maybe there's a rope bridge here normally?”

“It might attach from the other side,” Kakashi offers, leaning over Obito's side to look as well. The candlelight doesn’t reach far, fading into the darkness barely a handful of feet on, and Obito squints as he tries to make out the other side of the gap. There's no use, though; it’s too far away to see.

“A bridge on that side won't do us much good,” he says grimly. “It’s either across this pit or back the way we came, and I don’t think that snake will be much friendlier this time around.”

Kakashi makes a sound of mild agreement, then presses the candle into Obito's hand and says, “There’s a ledge.”

Obito follows his gaze and almost blanches. _Ledge_ is the most generous description possible; it’s a narrow shelf of earth that looks like it could crumble at any moment, starting at the lip of the cliff and following the wall. “Are you fucking _stupid_?” he hisses. “That’s not a solution, that’s _suicide_.”

“Maybe,” Kakashi says, far too cheerfully for that sort of statement. “You know, if I die you won't have to worry bout me arresting you afterwards.”

“I'm not worried about that,” Obito retorts. “You're too dumb to _realize that’s a cliff_ , I think I can take you.”

Kakashi chuckles. “You're very prickly, aren’t you?” he says. “Really, Obito. Has anyone ever told you that you worry too much?”

Obito can safely say that no one has ever been stupid enough to say that to him. He hisses between his teeth, grabbing the back of Kakashi’s shirt as he tries to pass and hauling him to a stop. “ _No_ , you're not doing that, Rin likes you and she’ll be furious if I let you die. So _no_.”

“For a criminal, you're not very daring,” Kakashi observes, desert-dry, but he lets Obito reel him back from the edge. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

Obito rolls his eye. “A death wish and a sense of adventure aren’t the same thing, you asshole,” he snaps, and shoves the candle back at Kakashi. “Hold this.”

Kakashi takes it with a bemused expression, lifting it up as Obito turns to the walls on either side of them. “If you’re looking for a secret passage—”

“Rasa's not that clever.” Obito snorts, reaching up and carefully sweeping a hand over the surrounding stone, and—there. An indent, hidden by the flickering shadows. It’s just deep enough for Obito to hook his fingers in, and he gets a foot against the wall, grips hard, and hauls himself up. The next handhold is in the natural spot when he reaches for it, and the next as well. As soon as Obito is a few feet up, above the candlelight, his next reach catches the long edge of a stone shelf, and he pulls himself onto it. When he stretches out a hand, only empty air meets his fingertips, and he grins.

“Tunnel,” he calls down, and eases forward to check the dimensions. “It’s low, but I think it heads towards the heart of the mine.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really, truly _thank you_ to everyone who's taken the time to comment on this fic! I'll admit I almost yanked it after the first couple of days, since it didn't seem well-received, but your kind words made me keep posting. Still no definite timeline on when the sequel will be up, but it definitely will be.

“Take the candle and I’ll follow you up,” Kakashi says, and Obito twists around, leaning back over the edge to grab it. He stays where he is as Kakashi starts his climb, then crawls forward enough to give him room, and checks the tunnel now that he has light. It’s low enough that they're going to have to crawl, but it seems clean, without any sign of a guardian waiting.

“Hear anything?” he asks, because Kakashi was the one who noticed the snake first.

Kakashi doesn’t tilt his head, but _sniffs_. A long, careful inhale, testing the air, and then he shrugs. “I can't smell anything off,” he says. “Just rock and stale air.”

That’s good enough for Obito, in light of what _could_ be there. “You have dogs?” he asks dryly. “Or did Rin mean you _are_ a dog?”

He thinks he catches a shadow of amusement flickering across Kakashi’s face. “If you think that’s an insult, try again. Dogs are _perfect_.”

“Cats are better.”

“ _Heresy_.”

It takes effort not to laugh. If Kakashi wasn’t an insufferable ass _and_ a sheriff, Obito might almost _slightly_ think he could possibly be amusing. As it is, though, he scoffs and turns, crawling forward into the tunnel as best he can while carrying their light. It’s almost too narrow, as well; Obito's shoulders aren’t _that_ wide, but if they come upon anything lurking, he’s going to have problems. Kakashi is leaner, and he fits through well enough, but hopefully they won't have to fight in these confines.

“Are we trying to take Madara by surprise?” Kakashi asks, after several minutes of silent crawling up the sloping tunnel.

Obito grimaces. “Preferably,” he says, because he’s come all this way to kill Madara, but even he can't have too many high hopes about how smoothly it will go. “Sasori and I have been after him for a long time, and I think we can handle him. You might have to get the children loose, though.”

If Kakashi has a response to that, he doesn’t offer it. Then again, when Obito glances back at him, he looks distracted. At least, he looks as distracted as someone can be while crawling through a narrow tunnel in the side of a hill. His eyes have slid past Obito, focusing on nothing, and there's a certain tension in his expression that wasn’t there a few moments ago. It casts his silence in the minutes before in a new light, and Obito frowns.

“Kakashi?” he asks, makes it sharp around the edges but doesn’t get more than a light hum in response. “What is it?”

There's a long, long pause, so long that Obito is in the middle of opening his mouth to repeat himself when Kakashi finally says, “I think the moon is rising.”

A chill slides across Obito's skin, raising goosebumps. He’s suddenly, abruptly aware that they're deep beneath a mountain, with several million tonnes of earth above their heads, trapped in a narrow tunnel with no space to move. For a moment, all Obito can think of is the blue light he saw last night, the creature in the desert, unearthly and terrifying in some instinctive animal part of his soul.

“Kakashi?” he asks carefully.

There's a breath, and it doesn’t tremble but Obito thinks it would if Kakashi had an ounce less control. “I need to find my dogs,” he says, and the words are tight. “I wouldn’t have left them anywhere. I wouldn’t have taken them somewhere they would get killed.”

 _Are you sure?_ Obito wants to ask, but keeps the words trapped behind his teeth. It’s clear the lack of memory is more unnerving to Kakashi than any other part of this situation, and Obito isn't about to rub that in. Not if Kakashi really was controlled somehow. Obito’s all too aware of what that’s like, especially when it comes from Madara.

“Could they be down in the mine?” he asks noncommittally, and tries to judge how much further they have to go. He wants out of this tunnel as soon as possible, preferably so he can actually move and fight if he ends up needing to.

Past experience and terminally shitty luck says he definitely will.

“Maybe,” Kakashi says, though there's very little of actual hope in it. Just exhaustion, bone-deep, and it makes Obito think of that moment when Kakashi woke up by the spring, terror shifting into resignation as soon as he’d realized what happened. “There would have to be something keeping them there, though.”

Locking up a man’s dogs seems like it’s very much the sort of thing Madara would do, though Obito doesn’t say as much. He probably didn’t want any hint that things were wrong, had Kakashi bring them along to keep suspicions at bay, and—maybe he killed them. Madara certainly doesn’t have many compunctions about getting rid of things he considers a nuisance. All they can do is keep hoping right now.

“We’ll find them,” he says before he can stop himself, and—a couple of dogs are hardly anything in the scheme of things, shouldn’t be important at all, but Obito of all people knows the comforts in clinging to everything you have left, no matter what it is.

Kakashi doesn’t answer, but his hand brushes Obito's leg in the darkness. “I think there's an opening ahead,” he says instead, and Obito is halfway tempted to ask _how_ , but at the same time it feels like one of those things that’s better left a mystery. He makes a sound of acknowledgement, squinting past the light, and there's a faint shift in the feel of the darkness beyond. Nothing clear, but the roof of the tunnel above them rises, opens up, and Obito gets a hand on the wall and pushes to his feet as soon as there's enough space for it.

He can't see very far, even with the candlelight, but this isn't a rough-hewn mineshaft. There's still solid stone around them, but it looks more like a cave than anything, with formations of stone bursting up through the floor like columns, smooth walls like waterfalls petrified into stone. Obito brushes a fingertip over one, and it comes away wet, the trickle of water nothing but a sheen in the flickering light.

There's also a golden thread on the floor, thin but bright enough to catch the dancing flame.

“I guess our detour didn’t take us too far out of the way,” Obito murmurs, and glances in the direction Sasori and the others must have gone. The cave slopes sharply, curves, and he frowns but follows, trying to keep his steps silent as he moves.

“Why only guard one tunnel?” Kakashi asks quietly in returns. “If the snake was Madara's…”

Obito _really_ doesn’t like that thought. “Maybe he couldn’t scare up any more help?” he offers, even though he doesn’t believe it himself. Madara has plenty of methods for persuasion.

Kakashi’s hum is equally skeptical. “It was behind us,” he points out. “Not in front of us.”

Obito thinks of the full moon outside, the light on the hilltop last night, the shape in the desert. Takes a careful breath, closing his eyes, and asks, “Are you saying it was following us?”

The beast last night wasn’t a snake. Obito is absolutely sure of that. But—what’s to say Madara wasn’t controlling that creature, and then this one as well? If the snake picked up their trail in the hills, followed them up to Rasa's claim and then into the mine, it would make sense. 

“I don’t think we should ignore the possibility,” Kakashi says, light despite the set of his expression as he meets Obito's gaze.

Obito hadn’t noticed. Something that big, and that mean, and he hadn’t noticed until it was practically on top of them. He doesn’t like that at all. Madara's recruiting skills have gotten better, or he’s just started grabbing the meanest bastards he can find wherever he goes.

“Or the possibility of more of them.,” Obito says grimly, and rubs at his patch, feeling the eye beneath it ache. At his side, Kakashi makes a quiet sound of agreement, casting a glance back up the tunnel, and then offers Obito a smile that’s mostly bullshit.

“Onward?” he asks.

 _Why are you doing this_ , Obito wants to ask, but he swallows the words. Kakashi’s looking for answers, the same as Obito is. He ended up somewhere strange, was probably controlled, and Madara is the most likely culprit. Obito remembers the feeling all to well, the touch deep inside his head that he only recognized too late, the _not-him_ pieces Madara left scattered across his soul. He’s been getting himself back, over the years, but­ _slowly_. Agonizingly, sometimes.

Hopefully Kakashi won't need to do the same. Hopefully they can kill Madara before Kakashi has another episode, whatever was done to him, and—

Kakashi is stiff, still, eyes trained back on the tunnel they emerged from, and Obito stares at him for a long moment, feeling a distinct sinking sensation in his chest.

“Kakashi?” he asks without much hope.

Pausing, Kakashi flicks a glance at him, then back at the tunnel. “Not a snake,” he says, which means there must be _something_. “It just…feels like the moon is up now.”

A full moon tonight, no longer waxing. Obito follows Kakashi’s gaze, even though there's no hope of seeing anything but darkness down here. “The sun can't have set quite yet,” he says, makes it as even as possible. As long as they have a little bit of light left, it’s an advantage for them. It’s a _disadvantage_ for Madara, regardless of the moon’s phase.

“Come on,” he says shortly, and feels it rasp in his throat. “We should keep moving.”

He thinks, for a moment, that he’s going to have to physically pull Kakashi away, but after a long hesitation Kakashi starts moving again, steps slow and slightly dragging but following Obito all the same as he heads after Sasori’s golden thread.

“Do you feel that?” Kakashi asks, but Obito has no answer for him. Glances back, because he can't tell what he’s supposed to be feeling, or if it’s anything close to what Kakashi might be feeling, but Kakashi isn't looking at him. His eyes are turned away, and there's a strange, distant set to his features, something that sends a shiver down Obito's spine even though he’s not sure what the cause could be. His breath wants to catch in his throat, but he controls the reaction, doesn’t let it, and keeps moving.

“We need to get to Madara,” he says again. It’s close enough to the truth, regardless. No matter what’s waiting for them, Madara needs to be dealt with first.

Kakashi hums, like he registered the words but didn’t actually hear them, and he still isn't looking at Obito. “There’s fire below us,” he says, as if it should be self-evident.

Obito doesn’t let himself react, even though he wants to. Wants to swallow, or turn and leave. Madara's always been fond of fire, and there's no reason to think that that would have changed since Obito left him. “If we drop a mountain on it, any fire will go out,” he says harshly, even if he doesn’t quite believe it himself. It’s also a hell of a lot less hands-on than Obito wants Madara's demise to be. After everything, he plans to see the light in Madara's eyes go out personally.

And then, ten steps on, he doesn’t need to hide a reaction, because there are voices to distract him.

Obito goes still, and at his shoulder Kakashi freezes too, head cocked. Carefully, slowly, Obito reaches out to pinch the candleflame out, then sets it aside without a sound. One voice rises above the other, louder and sharper, and then drops into a familiar threatening rumble. It makes Obito scowl, but he checks his gun, draws it. If Madara's in the mood to yell, something’s happening.

A hand on his shoulder draws his attention, and he glances over, raising a brow at Kakashi that goes unseen in the darkness. There's a pause, and then Kakashi’s fingers find the bare skin of his wrist again, sketch out _keep moving_. In return, Obito reaches out, taps his arm once, and starts forward, keeping his steps as light as possible.

Three steps on, the voices come clear.

“—don’t know what you're waiting for, but if you keep delaying like this we’re going to lose­—”

“Quiet.” That’s Madara, all sharp edges and buried anger behind a cruel smile, and Obito has to catch his breath, breathe through the rage and terror that rise like twin tides in his chest. “Rushing will only lead to ruin. This is an art that must be practiced with _care_ , child.”

 _Child_ is an insult, means _worm_. Obito can feel it prickling down his spine, sharp-edged fury that’s been smoldering since the last time Madara said that to him, in the middle of a bloodstained street, bodies all around him. Bodies of people _Obito killed_ , because Madara told him to. Because Madara wanted it, and in light of that Obito couldn’t even begin to see something wrong with it. If he hadn’t checked the last house, if—

“Your _art_ ,” Rasa says, cold and flat, “is going to lose us the moonlight.”

Madara snorts. “One meeting with the sheriff and you’ve gotten cold feet,” he says derisively. “How shameful.”

Kakashi is very, very still at Obito's shoulder.

“A necessary sense of caution,” Rasa retorts, and—

A sound. Soft, desperate, _awful_. A child’s sob, knowing nothing will change, that there’s no help coming. Despair given a sound, and it’s needles on Obito's skin, drives him three steps down into the darkness before he can think to stop himself. He reaches out, catches the smooth stone of the wall, and feels it curve. A corner, and he slips around it and into the brilliant, crystalline glow of the heart of the mine.

For half an instant he thinks he’s been seen, that everything is over. But in that half-second he catches sight of Madara's back, jerks himself down behind a pile of loose earth with an inward curse, and goes still.

No shouts rise, no mockery comes, and slowly, carefully, he breathes out, closing his eye and cursing his own impulse.

A hand closes over his arm, and Kakashi crouches down next to him, one brow lifted pointedly. Obito makes a face at him, but Kakashi just grips his wrist and pulls him forward, staying low. They slide between stone piles, keeping out of view of the center of the room, the shallow pit where Rasa and Madara are still arguing, and the room feels too large after the closeness of the tunnels, too open, but Obito grits his teeth and tries to ignore the crawling of his skin.

The pit is narrower than the outer room, perfectly round. As he slips behind a stalagmite, Obito glances over, trying to see if Sasori is close, but there's no sign of him beyond the golden thread that ends at the edge of the light. From this angle, though, there's a clearer line of sight into the pit, and he can see bars. Cells, lining the edges of the circle. There are nine of them, he thinks, or possibly eight, and in each one—

A child. _Children_. At least in the three Obito can see. And _young_ children at that, probably no more than eight. They're curled in on themselves, tucked back against the walls, and the cells are too small even for such small prisoners. Fury is white-hot as it rises, and Obito sinks his fingers into the stone, tries to keep from simply stepping up to the edge and putting a bullet between Madara's eyes. He wants to. He’s never wanted anything more. But—

Kakashi taps his wrist, pulls Obito's attention back to him. He meets Obito's stare for a moment, then pulls his arm close and writes against his skin, _Rasa's son_.

Obito swallows, careful and deliberate, and doesn’t look at the little redheaded boy in the cell. He’d suspected, but—hearing it confirmed is even worse.

Fingering his gun, he takes one more look for Sasori, doesn’t see him, and decides that’s good enough. The golden thread is at the entrance, and that means Sasori is somewhere nearby, even if Obito can't see him. Tipping his head at Kakashi, he raises a brow, and Kakashi smiles, the acceptance of a dare. Obito can't help but smile back, despite the situation; he could probably do worse for backup.

There's a momentary pause, and then Kakashi leans in, so close that Obito can feel breath on his cheek. “Who’s the distraction?” Kakashi murmurs, and Obito has to close his eye, force himself to focus before he can find words.

“Me,” he answers, and when he pulls back to look at Kakashi, there's a strange expression on his face, something sharp and distant all at once. In the glow of the light from the pit, Obito would almost swear his eyes shine silver, like a predator’s in the light of a fire, but he blinks and the image is gone. Startled, he opens his mouth, reaches out—

Kakashi catches his fingers, tangles them for half a second and then pushes them down. “Break a leg,” he says, a bare thread of cheer in the too-bright light, and then he’s gone an instant later, slipping into the shadows and seeming to vanish.

There's an unsettled, uneasy feeling, deep down in Obito's chest. He swallows, reaches up to press the heel of his palm against his patch, and wonders at the possibilities. Thinks of Kakashi in the desert, battered but alive, of silver eyes, of no memory at all. Swallows, and—

They don’t have time for this. The moon is only getting higher in the sky, and the sun lower.

Steeling himself, Obito gets his feet under him, pushes up from his crouch even as he keeps back in the shadows. Rasa and Madara are still talking, still _arguing_ , though Obito is doubtful that’s the best word for it when Madara's every response is so cold and cutting. _Tolerant_ , because Rasa is something less than him, some amusing toy to use briefly and then discard.

It puts Obito's teeth on edge, because he remembers all too well what that feels like.

Stepping up to the edge of the pit, he takes a breath, then in one smooth move he raises his gun, cocks it, and fires, aiming right for Madara's head.

Rasa hears the gunshot and drops, rolling out of the way, but Madara doesn’t bother. Almost as the bullet leaves the barrel, he steps to the side, turns in a flare of his long black coat, and lets the shot slam into the wall of the pit instead of his skull. Then he pauses, staring up at Obito, and there's a smile spreading over his face.

“Obito,” he says, and there's a thread of sharp, bloody delight in it. “You left me for so long, and this is your return?”

“No,” Obito says evenly, and he can't summon up even a rictus of a smile, no matter how he wants to bare his teeth at Madara. “But if you stand still for another three seconds I’ll try that entrance again.”

Madara laughs, low and rumbling in the light. He takes a step, and there's a flicker around him, light and sparks and heat, and he grins up at Obito. “You shouldn’t need me to stand still, child,” he says, and this time _child_ is all taunt, familiar enough to make Obito's skin crawl. “I know I taught you better than that.”

Obito doesn’t even pause. He takes another shot, and as Madara leaps back he flings himself forward, hits the ground hard and tips forward into a roll to spend momentum. Comes back to his feet, fist already swinging, and punches Madara hard in the gut.

Madara twists around it, catches Obito's fist, knocks his second blow aside. “ _Sloppy_ ,” he taunts, and hauls Obito forward, tossing him into the bars of a cell as though his weight is nothing. Obito snaps his teeth shut on a sound of pain as the green-haired little girl inside goes scrambling back with a cry, shoves away and rises and lashes out, and his elbow connects hard with the side of Rasa's head to knock him down. He hits the ground, and Obito kicks him hard in the chest, leaps over him. He doesn’t dare take another shot right now, not with the cells open to the air and the possibility the bullet might hit a child, but that’s fine. He doesn’t need the gun.

The knife he pulls from the inside pocket of his coat is long, gleaming silver-white in the brilliance. Stolen, and Obito can see Madara's face the instant he recognizes it. Fury twists across his features, instantaneous, and he lunges for Obito. Obito ducks to the side, slashes at a hand that grabs for his hair, kicks one of Madara's knees out and drives a punch into his face as he falls. It’s not enough to throw Madara off; he grabs Obito's coat, drags him closer, sweeps his feet out from under him. Obito hits the ground hard, and Madara is almost on top of him, grabbing for his throat—

The broken shaft of a pickax slams into the side of Madara's head with a loud crack, and Madara tumbles to the side.

With a curse, Obito scrambles to his feet, shoves himself in front of the idiot, and swings. The flat of the knife hits Rasa's gun an instant before it goes off, sending the shot ricocheting off the ceiling, and Rasa hisses, ducks Obito's punch, and turns, kicking out. His foot catches Obito in the ribs, and Obito moves with it, rolls and comes up on his feet with his knife already aiming for Madara's heart.

With a laugh, Madara sidesteps it, then leaps. One foot catches the edge of the bars, and he jumps from there up to the lip of the pit. “Obito, Obito,” he says, mockingly sweet. “I _know_ my favorite student can do better than that.”

“Your favorite _toy_ ,” Obito snarls, and there's a set of rickety wooden stairs marching up the side of the wall, but he ignores them, follows Madara right up the side and lunges for him.

Madara laughs again, like this is a game, like he’s _entertained_ , and sidesteps the blow, knocks Obito's hand away, grabs his elbow and hauls him forward, right to the edge of the pit. There's blood dripping down the side of his face, but not enough, and the wound is already closing.

There's empty air under Obito's boot, but he snarls regardless, grabs for Madara's throat only to have both of his arms hauled behind him. Madara's strong, stronger than any man Obito has met, and fighting him feels like fighting a petrified oak, ancient and immovable.

In his ear, Madara clicks his tongue, disappointed and condescending. “Do you remember _nothing_ that I taught you, Obito?” he asks, and Obito can see Rasa and Kakashi below, struggling over Rasa's gun, but the searing heat of Madara's power is at his back, more of a threat than any monster in the desert, and he curses, kicks back. It connects, but Madara doesn’t react, doesn’t even flinch. “And you’ve taken up with the sheriff, too. I can't even bring myself to be surprised as to the depths you’ll sink anymore, Obito.”

Obito laughs, ragged with rage. “The _depths_?” he spits. “Damn you to hell, Madara.” Jerking against Madara's grip, he wrenches at his arm, turns the blade in his hand, and drives it back. There's half an instant of cloth and flesh parting beneath the edge, a hiss, and then Obito's falling. _Again_. If he had the thought to spare he might be irritated, but he twists as he tumbles, brings his gun up—

The bullet hits Madara square in the forehead, just as a body hits Obito’s back, as hands grab him and he _rises_.


End file.
